LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
NATIONAL IDEALISM AND THE 
 BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER 
 
NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 AND THE BOOK OF 
 COMMON PRAYER 
 
 Essay in l^e- interpretation 
 and Revision 
 
 BY 
 
 STANTON COIT, PH.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "NATIONAL IDEALISM AND A STATE CHURCH' 
 
 \1VERS1TY 
 
 .- 
 
 LONDON 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 
 
 14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 1908 
 
(itftfcHAL 
 
i. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 FOREWORD ....... Vli 
 
 1. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: "THE LORD THY 
 
 GOD "....... i 
 
 2. THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: " THY NEIGHBOUR 
 
 AS THYSELF . . . . . . 49 
 
 3. THE LORD'S PRAYER : TO WHOM ADDRESSED 70 
 
 4. THE LORD'S PRAYER : THE PETITIONS AND THE 
 
 PETITIONERS . . . . . Il8 
 
 5. THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES .... 144 
 
 6. CONFESSIONS OF HOPE AND DUTY . . . l8l 
 
 7. OPENING SENTENCES AND BENEDICTION . . 194 
 
 8. THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS . . 2l8 
 
 9. ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER . . 240 
 
 10. ENGLISH LITERATURE AND THE LECTIONARY . 27 1 
 
 11. BAPTISM: SIGN OF INITIATION; RECOGNITION 
 
 OF CHILDREN ...... 29! 
 
 12. BAPTISM: THE CATECHISM; THE ADMISSION OF 
 
 MEMBERS . . . . . . 322 
 
 13. THE COMMUNION SERVICE .... 345 
 
 14. THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY .... 375 
 
 15. THE BURIAL SERVICE ..... 407 
 
 INDEX ....... 453 
 
 189208 
 
" The only infallible guardian of truth is the spirit of truthfulness." 
 GEORGE TYRRELL. 
 
 " I looked forward, through the present age of loud disputes but 
 generally weak convictions, to a future which shall unite the best 
 qualities of the critical with the best qualities of the organic periods : 
 unchecked liberty of thought, unbounded freedom of individual action 
 in all modes not hurtful to others ; but also, convictions as to what is 
 right and wrong, useful and pernicious, deeply engraven on the feelings 
 by early education and general unanimity of sentiment, and so firmly 
 grounded in reason and in the true exigencies of life, that they shall not, 
 like all former and present creeds, religious, ethical and political, require 
 to be periodically thrown off and replaced by others." JOHN STUART 
 MILL. 
 
 " Perhaps in religion, as in politics, the age of the symbol is passing 
 away, and a solemn manifestation may be approaching of the idea as yet 
 hidden in that symbol." GIUSEPPE MAZZINI. 
 
 ' ' Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing 
 herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks ; 
 methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling 
 her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam : purging and unsealing 
 her long abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance ; while 
 the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that 
 love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their 
 envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms." 
 JOHN MILTON. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 PROBABLY no generation of Christian life in any com- 
 munity has ever passed but that someone filled with 
 its spirit has been led, upon occasion, to maintain that 
 faith in Christ is and must be identical with faith in any 
 and every phase of righteousness. A beautiful instance 
 of such identification is found in an utterance of St 
 Anselm. "In 1012, the Danes" so Professor Gardiner 
 tells the story 
 
 seized Aelfheah, Archbishop of Canterbury, and offered 
 to set him free if he would pay a ransom for his life. He 
 refused to do so, lest he should have to wring money from 
 the poor in order to pay it. The drunken Danes pelted 
 him with bones, till one of the number clave his skull with 
 an axe. He was soon counted as a martyr. Long 
 afterwards, one of the most famous of his successors, the 
 Norman Lanfranc, doubted whether he was really a 
 martyr, as he had not died for the faith. " He that dies 
 for righteousness," answered the gentle Anselm, " dies foi 
 the faith " ; and to this day the name of Aelfheah is 
 retained as St Alphege in the list of English saints. 
 
 The teaching of this volume is based upon the principle 
 which lies at the heart of Anselm's utterance. The test 
 that any man is living for God, for Christ, for the Holy 
 Spirit, is his readiness to die rather than wring money 
 from the poor or commit any other form of social injustice. 
 
 vii 
 
viii FOREWORD 
 
 But if this be the test, there is no escaping the conclusion 
 that righteousness itself is the only true and living God 
 that the only true and living God is nothing more and 
 nothing less than righteousness. 
 
 The supreme revelation of our day consists in that 
 insight by which the hitherto fleeting glimpse of the 
 identity of righteousness with God is becoming the steady 
 vision of a universal principle. But this revelation 
 involves a train of further illuminations equal in value 
 to itself. Inevitably follows from it, for instance, a 
 perception of the identity of the sphere of righteousness 
 with human society on earth. The end of religion, 
 however inward, however spiritual, however mystical, 
 is the perfection of families, cities and States, and the 
 federation of nations. 
 
 This revelation of our day is dividing the professed 
 disciples of Christ into three antagonistic camps. Those 
 who follow the new gleam in perfect faith insist that 
 the whole concern of religion is the establishment of social 
 justice here on earth. By arousing protest, this new 
 doctrine and the new agitation in obedience to it are 
 driving into closer consolidation, as a second militant 
 group, those who identify religion with the use of 
 supernatural means towards some salvation of individual 
 souls in a life beyond death. A third camp is organising 
 itself which consists of those who, while touched by the 
 new thought, still cling to the old. They maintain that 
 the new emphasis of social justice and the new valuation 
 of the family, the city and the State are wholly within the 
 domain of religion, but do not constitute its entire sphere. 
 The Church, they say, has perhaps at times sacrificed 
 earth for heaven, but it need not now replace the motive 
 of attaining salvation after death by that of perfecting the 
 life of London ; each motive, they would insist, may 
 
FOREWORD ix 
 
 reinforce the other, since to work for London secures 
 admission to heaven. 
 
 My own conviction is that social justice is a jealous 
 God, and will not tolerate one heart-beat of yearning 
 towards the realisation of any other good. Thou shalt 
 not work for London in order to save souls from a hell 
 after death. Otherwise, as Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 St Alphege might have wrung money from the poor to 
 ransom his life. Appalling to me, accordingly, is the 
 strange blindness of the two camps who are fighting 
 wholly or in part for another world ; for they are begin- 
 ning to affirm that the exclusive identification of religion 
 with the cause of communal life is anti-Christian nay, is 
 the very form of paganism which Christianity overcame. 
 An instance of the spiritual blindness of those who boast 
 themselves to be on the side of the angels is found in 
 Mr G. K. Chesterton's criticism (in The Nation of May 1 6, 
 1908) of my own championship of communal religion in 
 a recent volume entitled National Idealism and a State 
 Church. What I there attempted was a demonstration, 
 sociological and psychological, of the identity of Judaism 
 and Christianity with the moral idealism of nations. But 
 the Judaic element in my synthesis Mr Chesterton mis- 
 took for paganism. His own Christianity had so far 
 outgrown its Judaic root as to retain no relation or vital 
 connection with it ; my judgment was, however, that 
 to-day we see a new resolving of the agelong contra- 
 diction between Judaism and Christianity. Judaism failed 
 of old to realise its national ideal in a political State ; but 
 that ideal has survived, in a condition of suspended anima- 
 tion, for two thousand years in the Christian Church the 
 witness of which is the fact that the Church has retained 
 the Old Testament. And now that for some centuries the 
 nations of the world have been awakening to a new and 
 
x FOREWORD 
 
 more spiritual self-consciousness, a synthesis of Jewish 
 nationalism with Christian universal humanism is begin- 
 ning to take place. One may interpret this new synthesis 
 either as a return to Judaism, which will some day 
 culminate not only in national churches for the Gentiles, 
 but even in a political State for the Jews on their ancient 
 territory ; or as a return to the Christianity which existed 
 before the nationalistic policy of the Christians was buried 
 in the ruins of the Temple of Jerusalem in the year 70. 
 In my book on National Idealism and a State Church I was 
 attempting to lead Christians back to the steps of the 
 Temple of the old Jerusalem ; but Mr Chesterton, for 
 all his gift of detecting deeper meanings, was so confused 
 by my seeming paradox as to lose his bearings altogether. 
 While he was walking with me up the Temple steps of 
 the old and the New Jerusalem, he imagined I was 
 leading him along the Appian Way to some shrine of 
 Julius Caesar ! 
 
 Whenever I read the New Testament with the thought 
 in mind that the cause of communal life here on earth is 
 the essence of Christ's message, I am especially astonished 
 at the error of a professed Christian who would identify 
 the religion of national idealism with pagan teachings. If 
 this identification be not the essence of Christ's message, 
 it is a little strange that not over an individual soul but 
 over a city Christ uttered his tenderest words of pitying 
 love and of personal anguish. But possibly Mr Chesterton 
 may detect paganism even in the words, " O Jerusalem, 
 Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them 
 which are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
 gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth 
 her chickens under her wing, and ye would not ! Behold, 
 your house is left unto you desolate." 
 
 The most striking and significant feature in the recent 
 
FOREWORD xi 
 
 Pan-Anglican Congress was the bold, intense and general 
 sympathy for the new and jealous identification of 
 Christian faith with devotion to the communal cause. It 
 was as if the whole Anglican Church had become animated 
 with the spirit of St Anselm and felt that his was the 
 spirit of Christ. And, in fact, for all England there has 
 arisen of recent years the necessity of a choice like that 
 which presented itself in 1012 to St Alphege. The 
 Church of England feels itself called upon to decide 
 whether or not it shall go on appropriating, for the 
 life of " worldliness, cupidity, clerical ambition, episcopal 
 parade, obsequious class estimates, the lust of the eye and 
 the pride of life," wealth that might put an end to poverty ; 
 or, renouncing these, identify herself wholly with the 
 cause of social reform. 
 
 There have always been witnesses, as I have said, to 
 the identity of the only true and living God with the 
 advancement of social justice ; and the beginning of the 
 twentieth century differs from former epochs only in the 
 degree to which this insight has become prevalent. In 
 order to test the extent to which it has spread, one perhaps 
 cannot do better than to note whether in unexpected 
 connections it spontaneously finds expression. If one 
 comes across it here, there and everywhere, one may trust 
 the inference that the thought is in the air ; for no lover 
 of a new idea will get the impression of such prevalence 
 if it does not exist. My own observation is that the sense 
 of the identity of true religion with devotion to social 
 causes is sweeping through the souls of men to-day as did 
 in George Fox's time the thought of the inner light, and 
 in John Wesley's of the immediate experience of Jesus 
 Christ in the heart. 
 
 One might perhaps expect to find this sense of the 
 identity of God with the Social Cause in such a volume 
 
 b 
 
xii FOREWORD 
 
 of essays as has recently appeared under the title Anglican 
 Liberalism. And there it is ; in the opening essay 
 passages occur like the following (from which I have 
 already quoted one clause) : " But, I say, learn from the 
 Labour party in social reform grandeur of moral purpose. 
 I was at the large meeting in the Queen's Hall, Langham 
 Place, in February, 1 906, soon after the General Election, 
 when Mr Keir Hardie presided over c London's welcome 
 to the Labour members/ I shall never forget the spirit 
 of that assembly ; the generosity of the common emotion ; 
 the mental melting of all distinctions of rank and educa- 
 tion in the fires of human brotherhood, in the burning 
 intent to help less happy lives and to heal the social woes 
 of England. Never, I must sorrowfully confess, did I 
 find such a spirit at a social reform meeting of Churchmen. 
 We Churchmen must do as those Labour men have done, 
 we must herein get the mind of Christ ; we must cast out 
 and hurl over the precipice the demons in our Church of 
 worldliness, cupidity, clerical ambition, episcopal parade, 
 obsequious class estimates, the lust of the eye and the 
 pride of life." 
 
 But I will cite, as a test of the prevalence of the 
 doctrine of the identity of God with the communal cause, 
 a passage in a book which had no conscious intent to 
 emphasise the social character of religion, and in a 
 connection which could not account for the introduction 
 of the sentiment, were it not in the air. The book I 
 allude to is by G. F. Bradby, and is entitled Dick : A 
 Story without a Plot. In a chapter named "Sunday 
 Thoughts " occurs the following passage : 
 
 I am afraid that in my young days I regarded each 
 individual service [in the chapel], if not as an actual bore, 
 at least as an uninteresting duty ; and yet, if I were to go 
 down to my old school again, the first thing I should do 
 
FOREWORD xiii 
 
 would be to visit the chapel and sit in my old seat. Not 
 that I consciously associate the place with any spiritual 
 crisis in my life. I don't know how it was with others, 
 but certainly with me remorse for sins committed, or new 
 ideas of duty, came in the stir and bustle of actual life. 
 But it was, somehow, as one sat in the chapel, day by day 
 and week by week, that, gradually and almost unconsciously, 
 one imbibed that most fruitful of all school experiences, the 
 sense of unity and fellowship with people whom one hardly knew. 
 And this leads me to wonder whether, after all, the men 
 who are responsible for the religious teaching at schools 
 are quite on the right track. I have often discussed the 
 question with a clerical friend of mine who was a school- 
 master before he took to parochial work. He maintains 
 that the beginning of all religion is a love of God. I hold 
 that children, at least, only get to the love of God 
 through the love of man : their parents first ; then, in an 
 ever-widening circle, their fellows. And I hold that the 
 basis of school religion should be an appeal to duty, to pity, 
 to the latent sense of responsibility which can be evoked 
 in any tolerably generous heart. . . . My friend objects 
 that this is ethics, not religion. But, after all, if the 
 Sermon on the Mount is not religion, it is something 
 better than religion ; or it may be that Christ knew that 
 we could only get at religion through ethics, as I imagine 
 St Paul did. 
 
 What do we find here but a reassertion of the principle 
 of St Anselm, that he who dies for righteousness dies for 
 the faith ? 
 
 My identification of religious faith with the cause of 
 social righteousness has logically involved me in a purely 
 humanistic interpretation of the essential terms of religion. 
 I have presumed to maintain that Righteousness is God ; 
 devotion to it, religion ; a turning to it, as an active 
 principle in the world, for new inspiration and guidance, 
 prayer ; the manifestation of it in persons devoted to the 
 redemption of the world, Christ because Jesus first 
 exemplified supremely the Redeemer-principle, and was 
 
xiv FOREWORD 
 
 called Christ. This step which I have taken has brought 
 upon me considerable adverse criticism, the purport of 
 which, although stated by various writers in different ways, 
 is especially well embodied in characteristic comments by 
 two of my critics. I will cite first a passage from 
 Mr Chesterton, as in replying to it I shall have an 
 opportunity for throwing further light upon my own 
 position : 
 
 Of course [says Mr Chesterton], we do use religious or 
 mythological terms with reference only to an abstract 
 spirit or agency. But generally this is only done with 
 dead religions or mythologies. Thus, offering our children 
 to Moloch now only means offering them to cruelty and 
 destruction ; but if there were really a little temple of 
 Moloch in Battersea, with a corrugated iron roof, we might 
 avoid the term as confusing. Or again, our lighter journal- 
 ism still talks (I regret to say) about the darts of Cupid ; but 
 if there really were an important Nonconformist sect which 
 believed in the positive personal existence of Cupid, we 
 should find it necessary to make a distinction. The whole 
 of Dr Coit's proposals for loosening or expanding the sense 
 of words is really founded on the assumption that Christ 
 is as dead as Moloch or Cupid. That is where he makes 
 a mistake. 
 
 In reply, I wish first to point out the lack of intimacy 
 with other religions than his own which Mr Chesterton 
 seems to betray. I had thought that Greek scholars were 
 agreed that the ancient Greek religion and mythology are 
 not dead. For instance, Mr Sidney Colvin, in comment- 
 ing upon Keats's use of Greek themes, speaks almost with 
 pity of those who hold the view to which Mr Chesterton 
 apparently commits himself, for he believes that it is they 
 that are dead, and not the Greek mythology. " Critics," 
 says Mr Colvin 
 
 even intelligent critics, sometimes complain that Keats 
 should have taken . . . subjects of his art from what they 
 
FOREWORD xv 
 
 call the " dead " mythology of ancient Greece. As if that 
 mythology could ever die : as if the ancient fables, in passing 
 out of the transitory state of things believed, into the state 
 of things remembered and cherished in imagination, had not 
 put on a second life more enduring and more fruitful than 
 the first. Faiths, as faiths, perish one after another ; but 
 each in passing away bequeaths for the enrichment of the 
 after-world whatever elements it has contained of 
 imaginative or moral truth or beauty. The polytheism 
 of ancient Greece, embodying the instinctive effort of 
 the brightliest-gifted human race to explain its earliest 
 experiences of nature and civilisation, of the thousand 
 moral and material forces, cruel or kindly, which environ 
 and control the life of man on earth, is rich beyond 
 measure in such elements ; and if the modern world at any 
 time fails to value them, it is the modern mind which is in 
 so far dead, and not they. 
 
 Now, I acting on the principle so admirably expressed 
 in these words of Mr Colvin's would fain have helped 
 to rescue the Christian religion from the death which 
 minds in so far dead have imposed upon its abiding 
 elements of imaginative and moral truth and beauty. I 
 believe that Christianity is about to put on a second life, 
 more enduring and more fruitful than the first ; and I 
 believe that those who bring this consummation to pass 
 will be those for whom mythology can never die, because 
 they see that it is a reference, poetic and inspiring, to 
 " experiences of nature and civilisation, of the thousand 
 moral and material forces, cruel or kindly, which environ 
 and control the life of man on earth." Can Mr 
 Chesterton really be in so far dead that he does not see 
 this ? Or is it possible that he is shamming death ? 
 
 What Mr Colvin says is not the expression of a view 
 peculiar to himself. Further on in these pages I cite a 
 passage from Professor Gilbert Murray to the same effect, 
 and possibly more pointed ; and the mention of Professor 
 
xvi FOREWORD 
 
 Murray and Mr Colvin tempts me to remind my readers 
 that those journalists who are most intoxicated in style 
 do not always lead one most straightly or steadily home 
 to the truth. Let Mr Chesterton's disciples take a course 
 in Professor Murray and Mr Colvin, or for that matter 
 in Keats and Shelley, and they will another time 
 challenge his statement that one who treats Christian 
 nomenclature as did Keats the terms of Greek mythology, 
 is classifying Christianity with dead religions. I confess 
 that Christianity is as dead to me as is the religion of 
 ancient Greece ; but this is only another way of saying 
 that to me it is intensely and vividly alive ; for I know 
 my Greek religion from my Keats, my Shelley, my 
 Plutarch, my Euripides and my Plato and not from 
 my Chesterton. 
 
 Now, however, we come to Moloch and Cupid. In 
 my view, there is one striking difference between Jesus 
 Christ and these deities, to which I am surprised that Mr 
 Chesterton himself seems oblivious else how could he 
 impute the oversight to me ? He would place the three 
 in the same category as regards the reality of their 
 existence ; but in my judgment Moloch never existed, 
 nor did Cupid, as an individual human being living on 
 earth ; whereas Jesus Christ so I believe did. I am 
 startled, therefore, to learn that on my assumption Christ 
 is as dead as Moloch or Cupid. It is not true that a 
 man who has lived is afterwards dead in the sense in 
 which the mere poetic personification of an abstract 
 quality or energy of human nature is dead. When we 
 say that we offer our children to Moloch, we not only 
 mean that we offer them to cruelty and destruction, but 
 we further imply that Moloch never was anything else 
 but cruelty and destruction. When, however, we offer 
 our children to Jesus Christ, it is true that we are offering 
 
FOREWORD xvii 
 
 them to the Redeemer-principle, universal and active 
 to-day and for ever ; but we also mean that we are 
 leading them back to a distinct and real person in human 
 history, embodied in literature, and traceable as originat- 
 ing or inspiring a great organised movement of religious 
 life. It is as shocking, then, to my sense of truth and 
 my gratitude to Jesus Christ as it must be to the most 
 orthodox and conventional believer in him, to read that 
 on my assumption he is as dead as Moloch or Cupid. It 
 is as if somebody should tell me that in my view of 
 English history Milton or Wordsworth had no other 
 kind of reality and have no other sort of existence than 
 such abstractions as liberty or justice or equality. These 
 are by no means dead ; but they do not belong to the 
 same category of living realities as do the great men, 
 whom I devoutly revere for that kind of suffering and 
 that heroic bravery which one can never attribute either 
 to an abstraction or to a poetic personification of an 
 abstraction. The day will come in the second and 
 more fruitful life of Christianity when men who hold 
 my view of Jesus Christ will not tolerate so passively as 
 they do now the spiritual airs which religious animists, 
 in their contempt for Christian humanists, are wont to 
 flaunt. It will be discovered that persons who have 
 dropped the spiritistic theory of Christ's activity in the 
 world to-day do something more than admire him as 
 Mr Chesterton admires primroses ; it will be seen 
 that they live by him, draw strength, peace and hope from 
 him, with as full an inflow of grace as the spiritists derive 
 from him. 
 
 But let us now consider, in regard to Moloch, whether 
 it would be expedient to avoid his name, were a little 
 temple to him to be erected (with a corrugated iron roof) 
 in Battersea. In my opinion, if there were a sect there 
 
xviii FOREWORD 
 
 who actually believed that Moloch was something more 
 than cruelty and destruction that he was really a dis- 
 carnate spirit, obsessing human beings that would be 
 only the greater reason why all the sane humanists of 
 Battersea should adopt the word Moloch as nothing more 
 than a poetic personification of cruelty and destruction, 
 and should everywhere preach in the local schools and 
 churches that he had no other existence. Indeed, until 
 there be little temples erected to him there is small 
 occasion for using his name ; but the moment the new 
 spiritism, which seems to be taking possession of many 
 minds that have broken away from the discipline of 
 science and of logic, begins to objectify cruelty as a 
 personal agent controlling human beings, it will be our 
 duty, in the name of sanity, to counteract this demonism 
 by accustoming people to the use of the name in a purely 
 scientific and poetic sense. 
 
 Now, to-day there are everywhere temples, not merely 
 to Christ the divine human being in his earth-life, 
 nor to Christ the divine influence radiating from his 
 earth-life among men, but to a discarnate spirit which 
 is called by his name. This seems to me an occasion for 
 the worshippers of the divine human being in his earth- 
 life, and of his influence after death, to set up in every 
 parish of England a temple where the name of Christ 
 shall be magnified and glorified, but explained not to 
 mean a disembodied spirit. 
 
 In regard to the darts of Cupid, which Mr Chesterton 
 tells us are mentioned in the lighter journalism that he 
 reads : suppose Battersea should erect also a temple not 
 only to love and the fascination of man and woman, but 
 to some personal agency which it was believed actually 
 took possession of unfortunate mortals and stirred these 
 emotions in them what would the remnant of the sane 
 
FOREWORD xix 
 
 in Battersea most wisely do ? Would they lie low and 
 never mention the name of Cupid, or would they boldly 
 say that he was none other than an appetite, a desire, 
 and sometimes a holy self-sacrifice, having no existence 
 except in the minds and bodies of living human beings ? 
 
 Does Mr Chesterton really believe that the more 
 cultivated Greeks actually had faith in the existence of 
 a personal, self-conscious agent whom they named 
 Aphrodite ? Let him read his Hippolytus again ; or, 
 if he has not time nowadays to resume his Greek 
 studies, let him take Professor Gilbert Murray's word 
 for it that she was scarcely a goddess in the sense of 
 a discarnate person, at least in the mind of Euripides 
 and his audiences ; and yet neither was she, on the 
 other hand, a nothing, and therefore to be overlooked 
 as if she were not a factor at all, cruel or kindly, in 
 human experience. 
 
 Mr Chesterton, then, has not proved by any means 
 that the moment Moloch and Cupid are to be worshipped 
 in chapels in Battersea as they will be if his philosophy 
 of religion becomes widespread in that suburb the rest 
 of London must eschew the use of their names, for fear 
 of confusing their devotees. So real and alive are the 
 forces in the human heart which these terms personify, 
 that when one says that Christ, on my assumption, is as 
 dead as Moloch or Cupid, I can only answer that I wish 
 to heaven Christ were as alive in Battersea or any place 
 else as they are. If the Redeemer-principle had been no 
 more dead in the world than these, the Kingdom had 
 come long ago. Mr Chesterton may take heart and hope, 
 as a Christian, the moment he begins to find Christ as 
 energetic, dominant, regulative and persistent in his 
 beloved Battersea as are the cruelty and destruction of 
 selfishness and the blindness of individual fascination of 
 
xx FOREWORD 
 
 person for person. It is no honour to Christ to suppose 
 that he is more alive than he is ; and it is unwise, from 
 the point of view of idealistic patriotism, to pretend that 
 Moloch and Cupid are less alive than they are. They 
 may have no chapels in Battersea ; but that may be 
 because they are so secure of worship in deed and life 
 that there is no occasion for formal ceremony. 
 
 Now let me cite a passage from a criticism by Mrs 
 Gilliland Husband, in a supplement to the Ethical World 
 for March 15, 1908. It follows immediately upon a 
 citation of my definition of religion, which is this : 
 
 Religion is the focussing of men's attention steadfastly 
 and reverently upon some Being from which they believe 
 that they have derived the greatest benefits, in order to 
 derive still further benefits. 
 
 This definition Mrs Husband introduces with these 
 words : 
 
 To find his definition of religion, Dr Coit follows the 
 old and discredited plan of looking to the lower forms 
 for it. 
 
 And she follows it with this comment : 
 
 One thinks irresistibly of the familiar definition of 
 gratitude : " A lively sense of good things to come." 
 This is indeed one of the things in the book which make 
 us wonder whether, after all, Dr Coit is serious, or whether 
 he is "getting at" us in a huge joke ; . . . 
 
 Now, if this be accepted as the definition of religion, we 
 shall be obliged to accept as religious in quality that emotion 
 with which a pack of hounds focus their attention on the 
 huntsman at the moment when he holds aloft the sacrificial 
 fox. Very steadfastly and reverently they attend, for they 
 know their master, and he carries a whip. They believe 
 him to be (nay, they know him to be) the being from whom 
 they have received the greatest benefits. They attend " in 
 order to derive still further benefits." Dogs are noble 
 animals ; they are capable of a sincere, disinterested affec- 
 tion, which often puts so-called " love " in the human to 
 
FOREWORD xxi 
 
 shame. But is this particular focussing of attention to 
 which I have alluded one of the noblest moments in the 
 annals of dog life ? Can it be said to be a moment of 
 canine religion ? 
 
 Upon reading this passage, I am astonished to find in 
 it a proof that there are persons to whom the word 
 " benefits " has exclusively a selfish connotation. I had 
 never for a moment dreamed that persons of literary 
 culture, and at all acquainted with the life of the finest 
 types of humanity, would imagine that the word " benefits " 
 should refer simply to goods which we wish to get for 
 ourselves, and not to goods which we wish to see be- 
 stowed upon those we love. I framed my definition after 
 a close and prolonged study of the Lord's Prayer. I 
 noted there an appeal, steadfast and reverent, involving a 
 focussing of attention upon a Being from which the 
 suppliants believed that they had derived the greatest 
 benefits. The benefit they had derived was the enthusiasm 
 for the redemption of mankind, which they had caught 
 from their master. They had caught faith in the coming 
 of the Kingdom ; but they wanted more faith, more hope 
 a belief that the name of the blessed Being should become 
 universally hallowed, that the will of God should be done 
 on earth and the reign of lovingkindness established. 
 And I thought I saw to use the phrase which Mrs 
 Gilliland Husband cites as a familiar definition of grati- 
 tude I thought I saw in the Lord's Prayer a lively sense 
 of good things to come. This definition may amuse the 
 cynic, but it need not discourage the saint. Others may 
 not believe it, but he is fully aware from experience that 
 he also has received benefits, although he possesses nothing 
 which the cynic may envy ; and that he also expects good 
 things to come, as much as the most hardened self-seeker 
 of them all. It could not but be a shock to me, having 
 
xxii FOREWORD 
 
 drafted my definition on the psychological outlines of the 
 Lord's Prayer and in relation to the factors involved in 
 the Lord's Prayer, to find that anyone should for an 
 instant imagine that the word " benefits " and the desire 
 to get further benefits should refer only to the lowest 
 side of human nature, and not also to the highest activities 
 and the profoundest realities of the human spirit. Mrs 
 Husband says that my definition of religion is one of the 
 things in my book which makes her wonder whether 
 I am serious ; but her comment makes me wonder 
 whether, when writing it, she was not for the moment 
 nodding. 
 
 But let us now hunt with what may some day become 
 Mrs Gilliland Husband's famous pack of hounds. I was 
 framing a definition of religion from the highest mani- 
 festation of it which I know the Lord's Prayer ; being 
 perfectly sure that if it covered the highest manifestation 
 of religion it would also comprehend the most primitive 
 and the morally lowest. But I had not troubled to seek 
 out instances of the lowest human religions ; much less 
 had I descended to observe sub-human manifestations of 
 craving and volition. I am grateful to Mrs Gilliland 
 Husband for having done this work for me. I accept 
 her hound story as an admirable illustration of religion at 
 a low and elemental stage, just as 1 accept the Lord's 
 Prayer as its highest manifestation. My critic is quite 
 right in saying that, according to my definition, the quality 
 of emotion with which a pack of hounds would focus their 
 attention on the huntsman at the moment when he holds 
 aloft the sacrificial fox would be religious, provided the 
 hounds were reverent in their attention to the huntsman, 
 and provided the fox were the greatest benefit in existence 
 which they wished to derive. I notice, however, one slip 
 of logic in her admirable phrasing of her illustration. She 
 
FOREWORD xxiii 
 
 speaks of the sacrificial fox ; but here she is thinking not of 
 the pack of hounds for the fox is not being sacrificed for 
 them but of their god, the huntsman ; and so I confess 
 myself somewhat confused, not being intimately acquainted 
 with sub-human psychology, but having studied rather the 
 Old and New Testaments for my instances of emotions 
 truly religious in quality. But the word " sacrificial," I 
 am quite sure, should have been omitted ; and, while I 
 cannot put myself into the psychic position of the hounds, 
 I cannot help suspecting that the fox, after all, was not 
 the whole benefit they desired. That huntsman held 
 them, so to speak, in the hollow of his hand. Not only 
 the essential conditions of life for them depended upon 
 their obedience to him, but he might punish and torture 
 them for disobedience. Pathetic, so far as I can imagine 
 it, is the state of mind of Mrs Husband's hounds ; it is 
 not they that are despicable, nor the quality of their 
 emotion. Dogs, which are slaves to man poor things ! 
 do not manifest a religion unworthy of our respect 
 when they look reverently to the huntsman ; but what 
 we must think of the huntsman is another matter. 
 
 In the very chapter where I gave my definition of 
 religion, I had especially stated that I believed it would 
 cover the lowest possible, as well as the highest con- 
 ceivable, form of religion. Indeed, my study of the 
 religions of primitive man has convinced me that a 
 scholar like Mrs Husband, without taking an illustration 
 from the kennel, might have cited instances of a far more 
 degraded order than that presented by her hounds. 
 Man, perhaps, as she says of dogs, is a noble being ; but 
 writ large in the history of human evolution is the record 
 of religious practices which have sunk men below the 
 level of any spiritual condition to which the lower animals 
 have been dragged, even by English huntsmen. But I 
 
xxiv FOREWORD 
 
 agree with my critic that definitions of religion should be 
 suggested by the highest forms of prayer and worship ; 
 I even go further, for I believe in limiting illustrative 
 instances also to the highest forms. 
 
 But it is evident that what Mrs Husband objects to in 
 particular is that my definition of religion limits prayer 
 to the expectation of good things to come, whereas she 
 seems inclined to set a higher value than I upon an 
 immediate, ecstatic union with some being beyond oneself, 
 without any reference to any task or purpose of the 
 human will, or any craving, as yet unsatisfied, of the 
 human heart. When I turn to the Lord's Prayer, however, 
 I find no evidence of union with the Father suggested, 
 except in the desire to see his will fulfilled on earth, and 
 in the craving that his disciples and apostles might have 
 sufficient daily bread to carry on his work, and might be 
 hemmed in from temptation and evil sufficiently not to 
 have their own good work intercepted or its influence 
 marred. I find no evidence in the Lord's Prayer of any 
 emotion like that to which Mrs Husband, in another 
 passage of her criticism, alludes of the union of the lover 
 with the beloved. I believe that many so-called spiritually- 
 minded persons have fallen away from the dignity and 
 virility of the religion exemplified in the Lord's Prayer, 
 and that not everything that might be sweet in spiritual 
 practice is necessarily good. Therefore, until I see 
 evidences in what, with most people, I regard as the 
 highest manifestations of religion, of something else than 
 devout and reverent attention to a being in order to 
 receive the supreme blessings of life, I think it safer to 
 restrict what influence I may have to the advocacy of this 
 as the essence of religion. 
 
 It might be well to add that, from my point of view, 
 to prove an act to be religious is by no means to prove it 
 
FOREWORD xxv 
 
 to be commendable. There have been good and bad 
 religions, and only the good are to be approved. There- 
 fore no citation of unworthy practices which would fall 
 under the definition I have given could prove that my 
 definition was wrong ; it could only prove that some 
 religions have been wrong. 
 
 S. C. 
 
 1908. 
 
TY Y 
 
 NATIONAL IDEALISM AND THE 
 BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS: "THE LORD THY GOD" 
 
 THE Ten Commandments are given a striking prominence 
 in the Book of Common Prayer ; the rubric enjoins 
 that they shall always be read prior to the celebration of 
 the Lord's Supper, and that they shall be committed to 
 memory by every person before confirmation. No such 
 mark of high esteem is given to any other part of the 
 Old Testament, nor to any part of the New except 
 the Lord's Prayer. It is evident, therefore, that the 
 founders of the Anglican Church regarded the Decalogue 
 as containing the quintessence of the Old Testament, and 
 considered this quintessence of such importance, not only 
 in substance but even in form, that it should be im- 
 printed indelibly from childhood on the mind of every 
 communicant. 
 
 This throwing of emphasis upon the Decalogue by 
 England as she awoke to national self-consciousness in 
 religion was an ecclesiastical innovation, which of itself 
 alone proves that the English Reformation was not simply 
 a nationalistic protest against religious cosmopolitanism, 
 nor by any means a merely individualistic assertion of the 
 
 i 
 
2 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 right of private conscience against the dictation of priestly 
 authority, but was also distinctly an ethical movement. 
 
 Indeed, there are three trends plainly discernible in the 
 Anglicanism of the sixteenth century, which have been 
 almost universally overlooked, yet which are as well 
 marked and historically as significant as its nationalism 
 and its new claim for the individual conscience. 
 
 The Book of Common Prayer, when compared with 
 the Roman Catholic Missal and Breviary, exhibits, in the 
 first place, a bold move away from supernaturalism. For 
 ages the Church had practised universally the ceremony 
 of exorcising evil spirits, and that of invoking good spirits. 
 Here was a supposed intercourse with personal agencies, 
 both good and bad, who, although outside of the living 
 organism of human society, were yet believed to be 
 manipulating human events and the destinies of mortals. 
 But the Anglican Church suppressed both exorcism and 
 the invocation of saints. Another striking evidence 
 of the trend towards organic humanism under natural law 
 is seen when the Burial Service of the Anglican rite is 
 compared with that of the Roman. Such a comparison 
 reveals the fact that, whether conscious or unconscious of 
 the philosophic nature of what they were doing, the revisers 
 of the Church of England turned the attention of mourners 
 away from the soul of the deceased as concerns its existence 
 after death, towards the souls of the mourners themselves, 
 their responsibilities and their spiritual privileges. Prayers 
 for the soul of the dead were forbidden by the genius of 
 the new Anglicanism. Anxiety for the welfare of friends 
 after death, instead of continuing to be systematically 
 intensified and even awakened by the Church, was now 
 assuaged by guiding the thought of the bereaved to other 
 interests. While there is still full recognition in the 
 Burial Service of personal immortality, and an expression 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 3 
 
 of hope for a life after death, the imagination of the 
 mourner is now far less engaged in this direction ; the 
 offices of the Church cease to be used on behalf of 
 the dead. The life beyond the grave becomes henceforth, 
 like the heaven of Lucretius and the Epicureans, removed 
 from impact upon us mortals. 
 
 Because the Prayer Book has scarcely been modified 
 since the sixteenth century, not a step further away from 
 supernaturalism has been taken by the Anglican Church 
 in the centuries that have followed ; yet the whole evolu- 
 tion of scientific thought in three centuries has been in this 
 direction, until now all the educated portions of English 
 society have advanced far beyond the stage preserved to 
 us in the nation's manual of religion. 
 
 The second trend, which is scarcely alluded to by 
 writers on the history of the Church of England, but 
 which marks the transition from Romish to Anglican 
 rites, is that towards social democracy not only towards 
 liberty of individual conscience, but towards the social 
 fellowship of all communicants as equals. What was the 
 meaning of the Romish withholding of the wine from the 
 laity in the Communion Service but an assertion of the 
 exclusive right of the priesthood to the enthusiasm, the 
 ecstasy, the creative energy, the initiative and authority 
 of religious utterance and control ? When the Church 
 of England insisted upon communion in both kinds, it 
 gave a blow of deadly import to princely priestcraft. 
 Social democracy has ever since advanced with increasing 
 mass and momentum, until it has penetrated almost the 
 whole of organised life. At last its pressure is beginning 
 to tell within the Church ; and as in the sixteenth century 
 it required communion in both kinds for the people, it 
 will in its full and logical consciousness in the twentieth 
 century strip doctrines, forms and ecclesiastical polity of 
 
4 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 every vestige of that irresponsible ascendency of priests 
 by which Church government has repressed the spiritual 
 and secular self-realisation of the masses. 
 
 In citing the return to communion in both kinds, I 
 have given only one of many instances of the movement 
 towards democracy discernible in the changes which 
 accompanied the assertion that the sovereign of England 
 was the supreme head of the Church, and that no foreign 
 bishop should henceforth possess any authority within 
 this realm. It is true that an almost absolute monarch 
 for the moment secured greater domination thereby ; 
 but whoever has eyes can see that the forces that caused 
 it were democratic, and were the very forces which 
 ultimately have established constitutional government, 
 and have shifted the political centre of gravity from the 
 kingship and the House of Lords to the Commons. 
 
 Thirdly, more marked and more significant and yet 
 more completely overlooked is the new emphasis given 
 to morality as a factor in religion. I might specify many 
 instances of this fresh development, but here I must dwell 
 upon the one which I have already mentioned : the 
 Anglican Church, departing from the Roman use, 
 inserted into the Communion Service the most decidedly 
 ethical document of the whole of the Old Testament, 
 and England as a nation enjoined upon all parents and 
 teachers not only to expound this document to the 
 young, but to see that the young could repeat its very 
 words at that crisis in their moral life when the Church 
 called upon them to assume in individual responsibility 
 what in their infancy their sponsors in baptism had 
 vowed for them. 
 
 Our Church reformers of the sixteenth century were 
 only giving the same pre-eminence to the Decalogue, and 
 only making the same use of it, which those ancient 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 5 
 
 Jewish statesmen had done who first cast it into the form 
 in which it appears in the book of Deuteronomy. The 
 writers of that book believed it would prove a ready and 
 convenient instrument in the moral education of the 
 young of the nation. In Deuteronomy, God is re- 
 presented as saying of the Ten Commandments, " Thou 
 shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt 
 talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when 
 thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and 
 when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a 
 sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets 
 before thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the 
 posts of thine house and on thy gates." This policy was 
 re-adopted by England when she took from Rome and 
 assumed for herself the responsibility of being the 
 religious educator of her people. 
 
 But what England thought fit to do then, or even 
 what we may to-day acknowledge to have been fit then, 
 can be no infallible guide to the statesmen of our day. 
 The sole question which should confront us is whether 
 the Ten Commandments are worthy still to hold in a 
 national manual of moral edification the same place which 
 has been assigned them in the past. The question 
 now is : If we were to-day to begin anew constructing a 
 system of ethical culture for the people, and were to take 
 no other principle as our guide than national utility, what 
 treatment of the Ten Commandments would that principle 
 dictate ? Should we discard altogether the use of a brief 
 summary of the elemental rules of morality and religion ? 
 If we were to retain such a practice, should we formulate 
 a wholly new and different set of injunctions, or should 
 we accept the Decalogue just as it stands, and interpret 
 it as it has been understood from the beginning ? Or 
 should we, taking the existing Decalogue as our point 
 
6 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 of departure, revise it verbally in parts and preserve 
 others as they are, giving to them the old meaning ? Or, 
 while retaining some parts, should we re-interpret them ? 
 And if they are to be interpreted in the light of our new 
 knowledge of psychology and of the social function of 
 religion, what is the new meaning which they should be 
 understood to possess, and which would prove of most 
 service in training the people to the responsibilities and 
 opportunities of democratic citizenship ? 
 
 A study of the Decalogue in connection with the 
 history and literature of the Old Testament reveals the 
 fact that even in those ancient times it had been subjected 
 to careful and persistent revision. In Leviticus, Exodus, 
 and Deuteronomy are preserved to us three forms of it, 
 representing as many stages in the evolution of Jewish 
 religion. A comparison of them does not reveal the 
 evolution to have been such as is generally supposed. 
 Most writers have maintained that the development of 
 the Old Testament message was from polytheism towards 
 the idea of one infinite Creator of the universe. But if 
 we take the successive forms of the Decalogue as illus- 
 trative, such is not the case. In the first place, in no 
 one of them is there a word implying either that God is 
 infinite or that he created man and nature out of nothing. 
 But, in the second, if we compare the successive changes, 
 we find that the crudest and earliest form of the Decalogue, 
 which is preserved to us in the 34th chapter of Leviticus, 
 is just as much and just as little monotheistic as the highest 
 and latest. It begins, as do the other forms, with the com- 
 mandments, " Thou shalt have no other god," and " Thou 
 shalt make thee no molten image." These words, of 
 course, in no wise imply philosophic monotheism. 
 
 What, however, we do discover, when the successive 
 differences of the second and third forms are compared 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 7 
 
 with the first, is an increasing emphasis laid upon social 
 justice, and a deeper insight into social justice as a factor 
 in national religion. In the first form of the Decalogue 
 there are no injunctions whatever to the effect that 
 children should respect their parents, and that murder 
 should not be committed, or adultery ; or that property 
 should not be stolen, or false witness borne, or the 
 possessions of others coveted. There is not a shadow of 
 condemnation of what we ordinarily describe to-day as 
 moral crimes. The last eight of the ten injunctions are 
 devoted exclusively to details of ceremonial which in no 
 wise imply an ethical character in the deity who commands 
 them. As tabulated by Wellhausen, these eight are : 
 
 The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. 
 
 Every firstling is mine. 
 
 Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, 
 
 And the feast of ingathering at the year's end. 
 
 Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven. 
 
 The fat of my feast shall not be left over till the morning. 
 
 The best of the first fruits of thy land shalt thou bring to 
 
 the house of Yahwe thy God. 
 Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk. 
 
 What a significant contrast between such injunctions 
 and those of the two later versions of the Decalogue ! 
 Bold indeed must have been the Jewish statesmen and 
 patriots who dared to discard altogether in a summary of 
 the nation's religion these eight ceremonial injunctions, 
 and in their place to introduce six that have nothing 
 whatever to do with the rendering of formal homage to 
 their God. From an ethical point of view, what a mid- 
 night of spiritual darkness still prevailed among the Jews 
 when the chief interest of their religious teachers was 
 absorbed in details which had no bearing whatever upon 
 the fundamental duties of man to man ! What prevailed 
 
8 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 was worse than a midnight darkness ; it was a mistaking 
 of darkness for light. These eight injunctions not only 
 excluded ethical commandments, but, being set up as the 
 chief requirements of the nation's God, they challenged 
 a deference and won an obedience wholly unmerited. 
 They thus not only neglected, they distorted, inverted 
 and perverted man's moral judgment. Whatever this 
 God Yahw6 might have been, two things are perfectly 
 plain. Injunctions about not seething a kid in its 
 mother's milk and the like could never have been repre- 
 sented as emanating from him had he been conceived 
 as the infinite Creator of the universe ; still less, however, 
 had he been identified with the power inherent in 
 righteousness. 
 
 When we compare the second and third versions of 
 the Decalogue with the first, we find that the Jewish 
 people had evolved from midnight to the clear ethical 
 dawn. And when we compare the second with the third, 
 we feel that if the second version marks the dawn, the 
 third heralds the forenoon of ethical religion. The 
 writers of Deuteronomy, apparently having no other 
 motive than national expediency, made bold to bring the 
 Decalogue into line with the best moral judgment of 
 their age ; and only when they had done this did they, 
 in the reign of Josiah, allow the Book of the Law to be 
 discovered in the Temple. But unhappily in the English 
 Book of Common Prayer it is the second version that 
 of the 2oth chapter of Exodus, and not that of the 5th 
 of Deuteronomy which has been accepted as the Ten 
 Commandments ; it is a form which was already obsoles- 
 cent among the Jews six hundred years before Christ. 
 As compared with introducing into the Prayer Book either 
 version of the Decalogue, the importance of choosing 
 the Deuteronomic form would have seemed insignificant 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 9 
 
 at the time. Now, however, whenever the Prayer Book 
 is revised, the substitution of this in place of the 
 Exodic form would be an incalculable ethical gain. 
 
 The moral differences are seen in the fourth and tenth 
 commandments. In Exodus the fourth had stood : 
 
 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days 
 shalt thou labour, and do all thy work : but the seventh 
 day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God : in it thou shalt 
 not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, 
 thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor 
 thy stranger that is within thy gates ; for in six days the 
 Lord made heaven and earth, the sea y and all that in them is, 
 and rested the seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the 
 sabbath day, and hallowed it. 
 
 The revisers in the time of Josiah struck out the fantastic, 
 mythological, supernaturalistic reason here given for keep- 
 ing the seventh day holy. They made the commandment 
 read : 
 
 Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy 
 God hath commanded thee. Six days shalt thou labour, 
 and do all thy work : but the seventh day is the sabbath 
 of the Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do any work, 
 thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, 
 nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any 
 of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates ; 
 that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as 
 thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land 
 of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence 
 through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm : therefore 
 the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day. 
 
 They had found better reasons for sabbath observance 
 than that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth 
 and rested the seventh. They could never have dropped 
 this reason had it not ceased to be to them convincing. 
 But it had ceased to be so, because they had found deeper 
 
io NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 foundations for the observance of the sabbath. These 
 they discovered in national expediency and universal 
 humanity. The day was now to be kept for the purposes 
 of education in the nation's upward history and for 
 discipline in humility, and out of considerateness and 
 kindness to working men and beasts of burden. Is it 
 not veritably a difference from dawn, if not from midnight, 
 to noonday, through which the Jew had passed from the 
 time when he kept the sabbath because the Creator had 
 rested after making heaven and earth, and now, when 
 his God enjoins him to keep it in order that menservants 
 and maidservants might rest as well as their masters ? 
 Now masters were to remember that they also had once 
 been servants and that they had once been delivered 
 from slavery. From gratitude and humility, as well as 
 from a sense of human tenderness and responsibility, 
 they were to keep the day of rest. 
 
 If philosophic monotheism means the recognition of 
 the power one worships as the Creator of heaven and 
 earth, then the 2Oth chapter of Exodus is more mono- 
 theistic than that in Deuteronomy. For the writers of 
 Deuteronomy struck out the only passage which could have 
 been interpreted as cosmic theism, and inserted in its place 
 an absolutely humanistic and social reason for observing 
 the day of the Lord their God. This comparison between 
 the two Old Testament versions of the fourth command- 
 ment must convince everybody who appreciates the national 
 responsibility of the Anglican Church as a moral educator 
 that at least the Deuteronomic version must replace that 
 of Exodus in the Prayer Book. 
 
 A similar minimum of revision is required in the tenth 
 commandment. The version from Exodus which the 
 Prayer Book sanctions reads, " Thou shalt not covet thy 
 neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" n 
 
 wife, nor his manservant," and then goes on to enumerate 
 other labourers. Here is a survival of primitive and 
 semi-barbarous ideas. Covetousness is made to cover an 
 unrestrained craving of the reproductive instinct as well 
 as an anti-social desire to own the property of others and 
 control other human beings as wealth-producers. Such a 
 grouping together implies that women are the legal and 
 rightful property of men ; only on this presupposition 
 could the wife have been classed in the tenth command- 
 ment among possessions and servants as a part of the 
 house. It is assumed that the husband owns the house- 
 hold, and through it the wife. But as far back as in the 
 days of Deuteronomy, Jewish statesmen had outgrown 
 this primitive point of view. Accordingly they revised 
 the tenth commandment, and put it in a form which 
 places the wife apart and in a category distinct from that 
 of household goods. The Deuteronomic version runs, 
 " Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife ; neither 
 shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house" and then 
 proceeds to specify details of property. 
 
 Perhaps the Deuteronomic version of the fourth and 
 tenth commandments would have been adopted by those 
 who constructed the Anglican Prayer Book if their work 
 had not been done hurriedly and under pressure of a 
 great political uncertainty not to say personal danger. 
 Yet one cannot help fearing that no such ethical evolution 
 had been going on in the reign of Henry VIII. as regards 
 respect for working people and for women as must have 
 been undoubtedly taking place in that of King Josiah. 
 But however much we may have reason to regret the low 
 standard of English morals in the sixteenth century on 
 these two points, there can be no doubt that now for a 
 century England has been leading the world to a new 
 recognition of the moral personality of women and of all 
 
12 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 labourers. And this new insight must soon lead at the 
 least to substituting for the Ten Words of Exodus those 
 of Deuteronomy. 
 
 Let us then consider the fitness of the Deuteronomic 
 Decalogue as a summary of the elements of ethical 
 religion. This version embodies the teaching of the 
 prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries before 
 Christ. It is the garnered fruit of the labours of Amos, 
 Isaiah, Micah and Hosea, who gave the ethical trend to 
 politics, patriotism and religion. Especially in Micah, 
 who lived about a century before the publication of 
 Deuteronomy, do we find the teachings which inspired 
 the great ethical movement of the seventh century. The 
 Ten Commandments as they appear in the 5th chapter 
 of Deuteronomy are but an aphoristic formulation of the 
 spirit of such a passage as this in Micah : 
 
 Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow 
 myself before the high God ? Shall I come before him 
 with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old ? Will the 
 Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten 
 thousands of rivers of oil ? Shall I give my firstborn for 
 my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my 
 soul ? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good ; and 
 what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and 
 to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? The 
 voice of the Lord crieth unto the city, and the man of 
 wisdom will see thy name : hear ye the rod, and who hath 
 appointed it. Are there yet the treasures of wickedness in 
 the house of the wicked, and the scant measure that is 
 abominable ? Shall I be pure with wicked balances, and 
 with a bag of deceitful weights ? 
 
 What a spiritual revolution, achieved through a process 
 of moral agitation, from the injunction that a kid shall not 
 be seethed in its mother's milk to the identification of 
 humility before one's God with not cheating in trade, and 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 13 
 
 with making restitution by returning ill-gotten goods to 
 the rightful owner ! 
 
 There have been unfriendly critics of the Old Testa- 
 ment who have maintained that where it speaks of mercy 
 and justice it does not mean what we to-day would 
 understand by mercy and j ustice. But this typical passage 
 from Micah proves beyond all doubt that doing justly and 
 loving mercy, yes, and walking humbly with one's God, 
 meant to the editors, compilers and political promulgators 
 of the Book of the Law nothing other than fair dealing in 
 even the obscurest transactions between man and man. 
 
 Thus in the revision made by the Old Testament 
 writers themselves we find not only an example to justify 
 any nation at any time in bringing its traditional religious 
 documents up to the social conscience of the hour, but 
 also the very principle which ought to guide England 
 to-day in the re-casting of her manual of Church services. 
 May we not follow the example of revision here set ? 
 
 But before attempting to gauge the moral worth of the 
 various commandments in detail, let us turn first to the 
 ceremonial setting in which they are presented in the 
 Prayer Book, and then to the form of the commandments 
 as such. 
 
 Our chief concern here is not the Decalogue in its 
 Bible context, but in that of the Book of Common Prayer. 
 In the Prayer Book, the immediate setting of the com- 
 mandments consists of the responses of the people after 
 each commandment spoken by the priest. This is one 
 of the most beautiful ceremonies in the whole of the 
 Church service ; but is it also one which will survive a 
 revision of the form and an amendment of the matter of 
 the commandments themselves in the direction of science 
 and social democracy ? 
 
 The old significance of responses by the laity to 
 
i 4 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 utterances of the priest is inconsistent with the new 
 priesthood of the people ; yet the old form is an equally 
 suitable expression of the relation of the laity to the 
 chosen and democratically elected mouthpiece and organ 
 of the community as a whole. It is fitting that the 
 official representative of the people at large should utter 
 those statements which poetic imagination has put into 
 the mouth of the community as if emanating from its 
 unified will. If it be the nation in its ideal trend that 
 utters all ethical imperatives as I shall attempt later to 
 prove then to a minister appointed to represent society 
 as a whole must inevitably fall the task of declaring them. 
 
 Equally fitting is it that the people severally should 
 join in the response ; for the commandments as I shall 
 have occasion to emphasise are addressed to the various 
 members of society, each in his individual responsibility. 
 It is the individual who shall honour his own father and 
 mother, and not murder, nor violate the marriage bond, 
 nor steal, nor bear false witness, nor covet. On this 
 account, nothing could be more dramatic or searching in 
 the whole of religious ritual than this form of speaking 
 and responding to the ten elemental words of the moral 
 life. 
 
 Nor could the substance of the thing said by the 
 people be improved upon. The repetition of the same 
 phrase after each of the first nine commandments, " Lord, 
 have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this 
 law," is a wonderful means of expressing the singleness 
 of moral aspiration in the midst of the manifold duties 
 enjoined. The slight change of form after the tenth 
 commandment " Lord, have mercy upon us, and write 
 all these thy laws in our hearts, we beseech thee " finely 
 indicates the finish without expressly announcing it. 
 
 It may be true that the words "Lord, have mercy 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 15 
 
 upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law," have 
 been heretofore addressed to a transcendent deity, but 
 they are by no means incapable of a humanistic appli- 
 cation. All the beneficent influences and ethical agencies 
 operative within society under natural law may be appealed 
 to in these terms. What more appropriate language could 
 be chosen ? The supplication now becomes a poetic 
 figure entirely fitting, because, instead of exceeding, it 
 falls short of our intense consciousness of the ever-present 
 and instreaming powers under natural law, but outside of 
 the individual himself, that make for righteousness. 
 These influences and agencies are verily the Lord and 
 Master of him who sincerely opens his spirit to their 
 control, identifying their direction with the secret bent 
 of his inmost will. 
 
 In regard to the form of the commandments as such, 
 there are three questions to be considered. First, the 
 commandments are brief summaries of ethical discipline ; 
 but shall the educator of the future make such conspicu- 
 ous use of condensed formulae as has been the custom of 
 all good teachers in the past, in every department of 
 instruction ? Secondly, the commandments are sentences 
 in the imperative mood ; but are such appropriate to a 
 democratic, scientific and ethical church service would 
 they reinforce the upward trend and the conscious moral 
 demand of England to-day ? Who is there, if we ex- 
 clude superhuman agencies, that can rightly, and will be 
 allowed to, issue categorical orders ? Is there or is there 
 not a supernaturalistic implication inevitable in the very 
 forms Thou shalt " and " Thou shalt not " ? If we to- 
 day are to turn our moral trust from supernatural beings 
 to human wisdom and human goodness, would it or would 
 it not be a forced poetic licence to represent these moral 
 attributes of man's personality as issuing decrees ? And if 
 
1 6 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 in our scheme of redemption neither superhuman agencies 
 nor merely abstract qualities of character are to be repre- 
 sented as literally uttering commandments, what power still 
 remains to us which can do so ? The third question to 
 be answered is not concerning the one who issues the 
 commandments, but supplements the first by asking, Who 
 is the person commanded ? Unless summaries and the 
 use of the imperative mood are justifiable educationally and 
 sociologically, commandments cannot be admitted into a 
 national ritual of the moral life. 
 
 As regards the resort to brief summations of knowledge 
 and wisdom, I must refer my readers to books which 
 treat of general pedagogical methods and practice. The 
 justification which they will there find for the use of 
 summaries in teaching any other department of science 
 or art applies equally to the case of instruction in social 
 justice. The Church's practice in its repetitions of the 
 commandments is wholly in harmony with the principles 
 of pedagogy. We may therefore assume that on this 
 ground at least there can be no objection to a continua- 
 tion of it. 
 
 As to the use of the imperative mood, who is there, 
 in a naturalistic scheme of national culture, to issue an 
 ethical commandment ? The failure to see that the 
 source of unconditional ethical sovereignty remains intact 
 although all supernaturalism is discarded, is a proof that 
 the common sense of men has been blinded by the old- 
 fashioned interpretation of our deeper moral life. For 
 in very fact there does exist a mighty Will over and 
 above, and yet consisting of, each individual will in 
 human society, and it unceasingly and categorically 
 declares "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not." The 
 General Will of the Ideal Community as the vital 
 principle of the actual community formulates and executes 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 17 
 
 laws by public opinion, through social customs and 
 political governments. 
 
 Some may challenge the existence of the will of the 
 whole community, or at least its efficiency in making 
 itself manifest. But, without entering into the philosophy 
 of the State, I may presuppose that my reader accepts 
 the view generally recognised by political thinkers. 
 These maintain that the State consists of those persons 
 in the nation who in their consciousness are aware of the 
 ideal trend of the nation's history, and who in their 
 rational will are possessed with a self-sacrificing desire to 
 advance the general welfare of the nation. Now, this 
 consciousness and will may exist only in the personality 
 of one man, or a small class or minority, or in a majority, 
 or in all persons who have been born into and are 
 reared under the influence of the nation's organic life. 
 However many or few they be, those persons who bear 
 the national consciousness prove that they do so by actual 
 participation in moulding the destiny of the nation. 
 And it may be maintained that in the rough and in the 
 long run they voice the real need of the nation's life, and 
 therefore give effective expression to the essential will of 
 the community. 
 
 Now, it may well be that the infinite Creator of the 
 universe never promulgated the Ten Commandments. 
 But no one can deny that the statesmen and lawgivers 
 of the Jewish tribe did so ; and, beyond all question, the 
 commandments emanated from the politically organised 
 will of the Jewish community. One may possibly doubt 
 the existence of an intelligent Governor of the universe ; 
 and then one cannot believe that he ever declared to 
 mortals that they should not steal or bear false witness. 
 But no one has ever questioned the fact that the Jewish 
 people itself, through its legislators, did so declare. It 
 
 2 
 
1 8 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 is quite clear that the Will which issued these laws was 
 that of the nation, not merely at the instant when the 
 Decalogue was promulgated, but through growing ages. 
 Indeed, in Deuteronomy the context of the Ten Com- 
 mandments overtly appeals to the historic sense of the 
 community by a reference to the great event of the 
 people's deliverance, ages back, "out of the land of 
 Egypt, out of the house of bondage." The idealistic 
 trend of the tribe as a growing nation through centuries 
 crystallised itself in these words, and through them 
 brought to bear the sanction of its authority upon each 
 living member of the race, binding him in loyalty to 
 itself, and exacting of him obedience and service. 
 
 If, then, it be true that always and everywhere the 
 Ideal Will of any society more or less constrains the 
 will of the individual members, and that the welfare of 
 the community is the higher law for the individual, the 
 imperative mood is more than a poetic licence. It is a 
 necessity of political speech, as the expression of the 
 actual pressure of the Community as an Ideal and a fact 
 upon the individual. It is the only means of conveying 
 in words the binding authority of the community over 
 each of its members. As compilers, therefore, of the 
 nation's manual of ethical religion, we shall, by the 
 nature of our task, find ourselves constrained to retain 
 the imperative mood if the authority of the moral code 
 of the community is to be indicated in summary form. 
 
 Although it is Righteousness, Duty, the Moral Law, 
 which issues the decrees, it is not Duty as an abstraction, 
 not Righteousness removed from the effective energies 
 of human society. It is the Moral Law teeming and 
 tingling with a nation's life, pushing and driving forward 
 the individual will under the pressure of public opinion 
 and political sanctions. 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 19 
 
 In the Ten Commandments themselves the actual 
 will of the community is not given authority irrespective 
 of whether the community be right or wrong in its 
 positive demands. It does not seek to constrain by 
 attaching extraneous sanctions of legal rewards and 
 punishments. The actual will is recognised only so far 
 as it makes for the weal of the community. It is there- 
 fore vj^ly the ideal community which speaks. The Ten 
 Commandments appeal to each individual's own moral 
 judgment. This makes them pedagogically and ethically 
 justifiable, since each human being always has latent or 
 active within him the ideal will of the community to 
 which he belongs. His intuition is the ideal of the sur- 
 rounding society alive within his inmost personality, 
 and it is for him rightfully the final court of appeal as 
 to what the true injunctions of the general will may be. 
 This general will is undoubtedly for each individual 
 an outside will outside of his whims and therefore 
 it may command him ; but it is also his inner ideal, 
 his higher nature, his tribal self, the essence of his moral 
 personality. 
 
 I have already indicated incidentally who it is that is 
 commanded to obey in the Decalogue, and need dwell 
 further on this point only for a moment. I have thrown 
 this question into prominence only in order to call attention 
 to the fact that it is not the community as a whole that is 
 appealed to, but each individual member ; and my object 
 in calling attention to this point is in order, when I come 
 to speak of the Lord's Prayer, to make more vivid the 
 contrast between it and the commandments. For, as I 
 read the former, its implication is that it emanates from 
 those very centres, individual and multitudinous, of 
 spiritual activity towards which the Decalogue is directed. 
 In the commandments the point of sovereignty as I shall 
 
20 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 reiterate is the community ; in the Lord's Prayer it is 
 the individuals. 
 
 Granting, then, that the imperative form is consistent 
 with such national idealism as we are attempting here to 
 incorporate into a manual of religious services, we may 
 turn to consider how much of the actual material contained 
 in the Ten Commandments of Deuteronomy is of enduring 
 and supreme value. 
 
 For this purpose it may be well to divide the ten into 
 two groups, at the point suggested by the division of 
 them implied in Christ's summation of the Law. Alluding 
 to the first four, and indeed quoting from the 6th chapter 
 of Deuteronomy (v. 5), Christ declared that the first and 
 great commandment was to love the Lord thy God with 
 all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might. 
 Fusing into one the last six, and taking the very words 
 from the i8th verse of the I9th chapter of Leviticus, he 
 declared that the second commandment was to love thy 
 neighbour as thyself. He further asserted that on these 
 two hang all the Law and the Prophets. 
 
 The first four thus grouped together are generally re- 
 garded as purely theological. By this is meant that they 
 are supernaturalistic, that they enjoin the worship of an 
 intelligent agency other than man. It is therefore inferred 
 that for anyone who has ceased to believe in a personal 
 Creator of the universe they can have no longer any 
 import. In contrast to them, it is generally maintained 
 that the remaining six commandments are purely moral, 
 human and naturalistic. The first group are said to treat 
 of Jehovah-worship, the second of neighbour-love. 
 
 But, upon closer examination, it will be found that the 
 first four commandments are not to be disposed of so 
 easily. They may be theological, in the sense that they 
 treat of worship and of a God to be worshipped ; but they 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 21 
 
 are not necessarily supernaturalistic. For the question 
 confronts us here whether the God of which they speak 
 may not be some factor wholly within the realm of verifi- 
 able experience, and within the hierarchy of human goods. 
 Let us consider what the first four commandments 
 would mean in the light of the closing lines of Matthew 
 Arnold's sonnet entitled " The Divinity." Arnold says 
 
 God's wisdom and God's goodness ! aye, but fools 
 Misdefine these till God knows them no more ; 
 Wisdom and goodness, they are God ! What schools 
 Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore ? 
 This no saint teaches and this no church rules ; 
 'Tis in the desert now and heretofore. 
 
 The problem before us is whether the first four command- 
 ments survive the shifting of our point of view from the 
 notion of God as the personal Creator of the universe to 
 the idea of God as human wisdom and human goodness. 
 
 Still further, we must, wholly on grounds of national 
 and world-wide social expediency, decide what reality 
 Englishmen to-day ought to worship. Having thus 
 decided, we must attempt to bring the nation's language 
 and forms of devotion into agreement with our convictions. 
 
 Before we can judge as to the political propriety of dis- 
 carding the commandment " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God," we must find out, on the basis of our own inde- 
 pendent moral experience, whether the commandment 
 " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself " covers the 
 whole sphere of ethical law. Many persons in our day 
 who have rejected supernaturalism have set up this one 
 commandment as embracing the whole of morality and 
 religion. But I ask : Does it embrace the whole sphere 
 of duty ? Is it even the first and great commandment ? 
 Or is it, as Christ said, only the second ? And if it be 
 
22 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 but second, what is to be our first ? And when we have 
 found that, into what subdivisions will it fall ? 
 
 We shall, I believe, upon reflection, come to the con- 
 clusion that the whole of the moral law is by no means 
 contained under the conception of love to one's neighbour. 
 Indeed, we shall find that that very love itself receives its 
 dignity from being subject to a commandment which binds 
 us to something higher than an individual person. The 
 ethical life is deeper and its discipline more organic than 
 mere kindness or affection for other individual mortals. 
 We must not only love men, but the Ideal latent in men ; 
 we must not only love men, but love Justice, as the 
 standard of relationship that should hold among them ; 
 we must not only love men, but must love Love. Not 
 only our neighbour must be cherished, but Righteousness 
 must be revered as the spiritual bond of man to man. 
 Less tender perhaps, possibly less gentle than devotion to 
 individual persons, is this devotion to the Moral Law 
 itself ; but it is more binding and inexorable, more 
 sublime and awful. If, now, Christ meant Righteousness 
 when he spoke of the Lord thy God, if he meant Right- 
 eousness worshipped as the sovereign reality of life, we 
 must assent to his declaration that the first and great com- 
 mandment is, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
 all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might." 
 Indeed, whether he actually meant this or not, and whether 
 the ancient prophets before him meant it or not, is in 
 purely ethical religion a matter of subordinate importance. 
 If we mean it, and know well why we mean it, that is 
 sufficient. Those of us who would teach faith in morality, 
 and would attempt to destroy as an illusion the belief that 
 anything else can deliver man, must declare that to love 
 Righteousness with utter singleness of mind will for ever 
 remain the great commandment. In a universal code of 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 23 
 
 religious morality, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself" is only a derivative injunction. Only under 
 Principle that is, never forgetting the universal relation- 
 ships of social justice mayest thou love thy neighbour 
 as thyself. The double commandment " Thou shalt love 
 Goodness as thy God and thy neighbour as thyself " con- 
 stitutes one perfect whole. On it hangs the entire sanity 
 of politics and history. The second part, though derived, 
 is in substance the same as the first. Love to one's neigh- 
 bour refines by individualising the love of righteousness, 
 and the love of righteousness steadies, dignifies and pre- 
 serves neighbour-love. 
 
 An analysis of ethical experience and an independent 
 interpretation of the Ten Commandments in the light of 
 social and psychological principles, while preserving to us 
 the distinction made by Christ between the first four and 
 the last six of the Ten Commandments, yet expose to 
 view a homogeneity of character throughout the whole 
 of the Decalogue which was altogether obscured under 
 the supernaturalistic interpretation. According to that, 
 the first four commandments inculcate the worship of an 
 intelligent Maker and Governor of the universe ; then, 
 beginning with the fifth commandment, the point of view 
 is shifted to another plane. The commandments sud- 
 denly become purely social and humanistic, historical 
 and moral. It is hard to see why, all at once, the 
 intelligent and infinite Creator of the universe, after 
 exacting homage to himself, should become equally 
 concerned that children should honour their parents, and 
 that no one should steal, murder, covet, and the like. 
 But if it is nothing other than the ideal will of the 
 community itself which is the " I " speaking and the 
 "me" to whom homage is exacted in the first four com- 
 mandments, nothing could be more perfectly of one 
 
24 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 piece than the Ten Commandments are, despite the 
 difference between the first four and the last six Words. 
 The Decalogue is now seen to possess from beginning to 
 end a psychological, a political and a religious not to 
 mention a literary unity. 
 
 The harmony and proportion, the symmetry and con- 
 sistency of meaning thus brought to view, are too nearly 
 perfect to have originated in a fanciful and arbitrary 
 interpretation. An interpretation must commend itself 
 to us which discloses such interdependence and natural- 
 ness of meaning. It is impossible to escape the belief 
 that the higher will of the community was not only the 
 power actually guiding the judgment of the Jewish 
 statesmen, but was also the reality which they worshipped 
 as the Lord their God. No explanation, if it were not 
 true, could reveal such mutual support of parts in any 
 document. On this ground we are justified in maintain- 
 ing that the being of whom the first four commandments 
 enjoin the worship is none other than Wisdom and 
 Goodness. But whether they were the God of the 
 ancient Jews or not is of no primary significance ; the 
 question for us is : Shall we make Wisdom and Goodness 
 our God ? If we do, we as a nation are face to face with 
 the same problem which confronted the writers of 
 Deuteronomy. Shall we promulgate to the people of the 
 land that they shall love wisdom and goodness with all 
 their heart and with all their soul and with all their might ? 
 And shall we not, moreover, proceed to subdivide this 
 general commandment as the exigencies of our day 
 require ? 
 
 i. Shall the Ten Commandments of the future if we 
 are to retain such a summary of morality and religion 
 begin with the statement " I am the Lord thy God : 
 thou shalt have none other gods before me " ? 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 25 
 
 This statement is not self-illuminating as to the identity 
 of the " I " who is represented as issuing the command- 
 ment. Although we waive for the moment who or what 
 it is that speaks, the commandment still says something 
 very definite. It says that the power speaking is the Lord 
 God of the person spoken to. This can mean nothing else 
 than that the power speaking is the source of the supreme 
 blessings of life to each person addressed, and, on grounds 
 of national expediency, should receive steadfast obedience 
 and reverence. The sentence " I am the Lord thy God " 
 might be paraphrased into " I am the being by obeying 
 and reverencing whom thou shalt receive the highest 
 benefits/' As there probably would be no dispute as to 
 this interpretation, we may turn to note that it would 
 have been perfectly possible for the framers of the com- 
 mandment to have introduced a clause in apposition with 
 the first personal pronoun, which would for ever have 
 put beyond all question who the person was that issued 
 the command. If, for instance, the author of the 
 Decalogue meant to represent the moral and intelligent 
 Governor of the universe as speaking, it would have been 
 no sacrifice of aphoristic brevity to have introduced words 
 to that effect. The first clause might have stood, "I, 
 the intelligent and moral Governor of the universe, am 
 the Lord thy God," or " I, the infinite personal Creator of 
 the universe, am the Lord thy God," or " I, the infinite 
 supernatural agency who created the world out of nothing, 
 am the Lord thy God." Unfortunately, or fortunately, 
 no such specification to point unequivocally to the being 
 designated by the word " God " appears in the Ten 
 Commandments, or anywhere else throughout the Old 
 or New Testament. We are left to our own resources 
 to discover what factor in experience the word God 
 indicates. The writers of the Bible somehow assumed 
 
26 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 that readers would know what reality was meant. But 
 such has been far from the case. 
 
 Scholars are more and more coming to the conclusion, 
 however, that there is no adequate justification for the 
 notion that the Jews meant by the word " God " an 
 infinite Creator of the universe, or a moral and intelligent 
 Governor of all things. More and more they are coming 
 to recognise that the word points to the Ideal of Social Justice 
 as the constructive principle of human society ', and therefore 
 as a living, creative reality within verifiable experience. 
 
 Those whose study of the Bible has led them to this 
 conclusion if to them the question were submitted as 
 to what clause in apposition with the first personal 
 pronoun should be introduced in this commandment 
 might urge that it should read, " I, the Principle of Social 
 Justice, am the Lord thy God." Of course, the exact 
 wording is not the point for which I am contending. 
 The clause might read, " I, the Social Conscience," or " I, 
 the Moral Ideal," or " I, the Good in Man," or " I, the 
 Cause of the Good in the world, am the Lord thy God." 
 
 It may be well also to observe that the form of com- 
 mandment might still be retained although the being 
 called God were not represented as speaking in the first 
 person. God might be referred to or spoken about. 
 Thus, instead of saying " I am the Lord thy God," it 
 would have been possible to introduce the commandments 
 by saying, " The personal Creator of the universe is the 
 Lord thy God : thou shalt have none other gods before 
 him." The remaining nine commandments might have 
 been cast in similar fashion. Indeed, it would be possible 
 for any nation to-day formulating new commandments 
 or re-casting old ones to give them this shape. 
 
 Those who did not believe that the world was created 
 out of nothing by a supernatural personal agency would 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 27 
 
 naturally protest against the formula, "The personal 
 Creator of the world is the Lord thy God." Those 
 who believed as Matthew Arnold did would say 
 something to this effect : " The Ideal of Social Justice 
 as the formative principle of human society is the Lord 
 thy God : thou shalt have none other gods before it." 
 And all the rest of the commandments could be so 
 re-shaped that some such phrase as the Moral Ideal, or 
 the Good in the world, or Duty, or the Moral Law, or 
 the Vision of the Perfect City, could be introduced at 
 various points in such a way as to put beyond all doubt 
 what was meant by " the Lord thy God." 
 
 If, however, the being who is set up as a God is not 
 to be represented as speaking in the first person, a 
 difficulty arises which is not merely verbal. For who, 
 then, is it that issues the commandment " Thou shalt 
 have none other gods before the Ideal of Social Justice" ? 
 The power or person who issues the command must be 
 the supreme and final authority, the sovereign whose 
 sanction is the chief credential to the dignity and efficacy 
 of the commandment. Who, then, is it who presumes 
 to order me to worship the Moral Ideal as my God ? If 
 it be something else or somebody else than the Moral 
 Ideal itself, there is a divided authority. The person 
 issuing the commandment either sets himself above the 
 God whose worship he commands, or else he speaks only 
 in the name of the God. We may set aside as morally 
 impossible that he should elevate himself as an authority 
 superior to the God which he commands to be worshipped. 
 There only remains, then, that the power issuing the 
 commandment speaks on behalf of and in the name of 
 the God who commands. If this be so, it is then after 
 all the God who speaks, and the first person would be 
 the only appropriate form of expression. The command- 
 
28 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 ment must mean, " Thou shalt have none other gods 
 before me, who am the Ideal of Social Justice, the 
 formative principle of human society/' 
 
 It is true, as I have said, that in the Ten Command- 
 ments the community itself, through its recognised law- 
 givers, issued the injunctions ; but, as I have also 
 indicated, the actual community is evidently speaking 
 on behalf of the ideal community, which it recognises 
 as the regulative authority at the heart of its 
 positive laws and statutes. It is not the community 
 right or wrong, but the community right who issues the 
 decrees. I may assume, then, that my reader agrees 
 with me that the first personal pronoun, indicating the 
 final authority from which the commandment emanates, 
 and from which it derives its moral weight and dignity, 
 should be retained. The only question remaining is 
 whether this commandment should contain a clause in 
 apposition with the first personal pronoun, to indicate 
 unequivocally the power which is represented as speaking. 
 There is little objection to the introduction of such a 
 clause ; but my own judgment is that there is no 
 educational ground for the innovation. The command- 
 ments must always be taught to the young and to the 
 ignorant by teachers who know far more about them than 
 the summary itself could disclose. The teacher must 
 explain the commandments, no matter how self-illuminat- 
 ing they may be. It would be perfectly possible, for 
 instance, for the mother or father, or teacher or priest, 
 when the child is committing the first commandment to 
 memory, to tell him that whenever in his heart he wants 
 to do right and to be good, that is God, and that 
 this desire to do right is represented in the command- 
 ment as saying, " I am the Lord thy God." As the child 
 grows in understanding and in moral experience he will 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD " 29 
 
 know more and more the full power and scope and reality 
 of goodness and wisdom. If he is thus instructed, there 
 will be no possibility of his ever forgetting what his God 
 is. Nor will the reasonableness of the commandment 
 elude his youthful judgment. We may therefore safely 
 retain the first person to indicate that God himself issues 
 the commandments, without introducing an explanatory 
 clause in apposition with the pronoun. 
 
 We must remember that no summary of moral and 
 religious duties could in any case be wholly self-illuminat- 
 ing. A summary always presupposes the instructor at 
 hand. What is more, a commandment, being made clear 
 by the teacher, takes a more powerful hold upon the 
 constructive imagination when no attempt is made in 
 the formula itself to explain its own reference. It leaves 
 much to the experience and previous education of its 
 public. It trusts to its own suggestiveness to supply 
 what it does not overtly announce. Indeed, we may well 
 insist that, had not pedants and self-interested religionists, 
 for purposes and vanities of their own, read metaphysical 
 meanings into the Bible as a whole, and into the Ten 
 Commandments in particular, there would have been no 
 great misunderstanding of its message. Among simple 
 folk there never has been a great misunderstanding ; 
 they have identified God with the good in the world, 
 because the commandments associate him so intimately 
 with respect for home, property, life, truthfulness and 
 marriage. Let us then keep the first personal pronoun, 
 and trust to the teacher and to the native wit of the 
 guileless to bring home to the people that Goodness is 
 the God who speaks. 
 
 I have, in another volume, 1 met many objections to 
 
 1 National Idealism and a State Church (London : Williams & Norgate, 
 1907). 
 
30 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 the notion that an abstraction like morality should be 
 worshipped as God ; I will here, therefore, only remind 
 my reader that it is wholly consonant with literary usage, 
 and that it is psychologically natural, for man to represent 
 abstract moral qualities as speaking to him. If I seem to 
 propose a tasteless innovation, it must be remembered that 
 to the unthinking all innovations seem so. 
 
 Such qualities as virtue, although "abstract," are realities. 
 Moral ideas are powers and energies in human life. They 
 constitute together a sublime and awful presence, which 
 in moments of spiritual illumination is felt with over- 
 powering vividness. Poetic imagination is little else than 
 a way of realising intellectually this emotional sense of the 
 reality, nearness, and potency of ideas and principles. To 
 speak to them and to let them speak to us is wholly 
 justifiable when righteousness is felt to have the spiritual 
 attraction of a personal friend with whom one stands in 
 intimate and vital communion. To interpret the first 
 commandment as meaning " Thou shalt have none other 
 gods before Righteousness " will seem insipid and tasteless 
 only to those to whom and there are such morality is, 
 after all, but a figment of conventional propriety or a 
 dictate of tyrants. To allow righteousness to speak 
 through our imagination in its own person is to give 
 relief and scope to conscience, which suffers too much 
 imprisonment. We are justified, then, in counting a 
 distaste for an ethical interpretation of the first command- 
 ment as evidence of reflective immaturity. 
 
 As part of a scheme of moral education, the setting up 
 of Duty as an object of reverence, which the first com- 
 mandment, when ethically interpreted, enjoins, is so im- 
 portant from the point of view of national expediency 
 that it can scarcely be over-estimated. The State must 
 devise means of fixing duty in the centre of the people's 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 31 
 
 voluntary attention. The first commandment, when em- 
 bodied in the national ritual, is one such means. It is 
 one which cannot fail to receive the respect of every 
 educator and every wise legislator. The object of educa- 
 tion is to build the State upon inner foundations eternal 
 in the reason and social circumstance of man. Nation- 
 builders must resort to all ways consistent with the 
 end in view of making men love social justice. Such 
 love will not come of itself ; it requires nurture, and 
 the nurture presupposes discipline, and the discipline 
 must come from the systematic effort of teachers and 
 statesmen. Without such effort, a people is sure to 
 go astray from the path which leads to sobriety and 
 efficiency in social service ; for the routine of business, the 
 cares of life, tend to crowd out all thought of the higher 
 interests of mankind. They are liable to bury out of 
 sight the knowledge of the great past of humanity, and 
 to make us forget the ideal destinies of the human race 
 and the inner satisfactions of a life spent in the furtherance 
 of these destinies. Political genius, therefore, must invent 
 means to offset the dead weight, not only of momentary 
 impulse and passion, but of sordid cares and petty personal 
 vanities. Such an invention is the reiteration of the first 
 commandment by the people of a nation. The leaders of 
 Israel pushed to the forefront of their political and educa- 
 tional policy the setting up of social duty as the nation's 
 God. 
 
 We often marvel at the unique vitality which the Jewish 
 race has shown for three thousand years. Yet that vitality 
 is itself chiefly a product of the statesmanship of the ancient 
 Jewish patriots. It was Judaism as a scheme of ethical 
 culture which became the moulding influence of the people. 
 That scheme introduced into the mind of every Jew from 
 early childhood ideas which acted towards his self-preserva- 
 
32 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 tion and the preservation of his race in a social environ- 
 ment almost wholly unfavourable and unfriendly. Except 
 for their religious teachings, the Jews, no matter what 
 natural gifts they may have possessed, must have suc- 
 cumbed ages ago. Their unique vitality is beyond all 
 doubt due to the fact that their leaders nearly three 
 thousand years ago set up the elements of social morality 
 as the only God who would deliver them as a people, and 
 give them long life, health and ultimate prosperity. 
 
 Except for this insight and foresight of its statesmen, 
 it is a question whether the Hebrew race was pre-eminent 
 over its neighbours either in physique or intellect. It 
 certainly was not pre-eminent in spontaneous moral quality. 
 The ethical character of its religion was not a spontaneous, 
 effortless growth. Only the insistent instruction compelled 
 by the religious statesmen taught the people to regard 
 personal and social morality as the first requisite for 
 length and strength of life. It will escape no close 
 student of the Ten Commandments in particular, or of 
 the whole of the Old Testament, that righteousness is not 
 set up in the Jewish religion as an end in itself, unrelated 
 to national and domestic consequences. On the contrary, 
 the statesmen, prophets and teachers constantly give 
 as the whole motive for the duties laid down, to lengthen 
 life and prevent calamity from falling upon the children 
 and the children's children for generations to come. The 
 experienced leaders of the Jews had evidently had reasons 
 for forcing upon the people again and again the impor- 
 tance of self-restraint, mercifulness, strict integrity and 
 scrupulous justice. In the commandment "Thou shalt 
 have none other gods before me," we see the wise 
 strenuousness of the remnant of the righteous attempting 
 to communicate itself to the whole nation. 
 
 For England to-day it is as necessary as it was for the 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD " 33 
 
 Jewish race seven hundred years before Christ to insist 
 upon the pre-eminent claim of righteousness over other 
 objects of nature and other impulses of the human heart 
 which clamour for attention. There is as much com- 
 petition to-day between the moral sentiment and other 
 energies and aspects of experience which allure us as 
 ever there was, although these aspects may long ago have 
 been banished from formal worship in our religious cults. 
 And it is as much as ever of the very nature of Duty to 
 allow no competitor with itself for the supreme reverence 
 of the heart. There is infinite reason why Duty as a 
 God should continue to be declared a jealous God. 
 Thousands of splendid potencies and pleasures of appetite 
 and eye obtrude themselves upon the innocent and upon 
 the undisciplined imagination and clamour for homage. 
 They allure the heart of man into devious ways ; they 
 offer intense delights and immense rewards. The 
 blessings of justice and mercy, on the other hand, although 
 deeper and more abiding, are less assertive and aggressive. 
 The beauty of holiness is not so dazzling as the splendour 
 of light and wine ; its strength is quieter and less insistent 
 than the impulses of appetite. Such being the case, there 
 is little hope or chance for the supremacy of wisdom and 
 goodness unless these be systematically singled out and 
 lifted up above all other goods, and unless they be guarded 
 by parents, teachers, poets, judges and lawgivers against 
 the insidious deification of self and the usurpation of the 
 world and the flesh. 
 
 There is a foolish notion prevalent that the difference 
 between the God of the Jews and the gods of the sur- 
 rounding tribes consisted in the fact that the God of the 
 Jews was a real being, while the gods of the other tribes 
 were merely fictitious creations of superstitious fancy. 
 This notion emanates from the supernaturalists, who look 
 
 3 
 
34 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 upon the gods both of the Jewish and the other tribes as 
 being necessarily personal agencies, outside of human 
 society and beyond nature. They do not believe that 
 any such personal agencies as Baal, Moloch and Ashtoreth 
 existed. They do believe, however, in the existence of 
 one supernatural agent whom, in their opinion, the Jews 
 worshipped under the name of Yahwe. The truly 
 psychological and scientific statement of the case is, how- 
 ever, that both the Jews and the neighbouring tribes 
 worshipped real, natural, human forces as gods. The 
 Jews ultimately worshipped exclusively the moral senti- 
 ment ; while the other tribes worshipped, if not the 
 quickening energies of animal and vegetable life, some 
 other material sources of benefit to man. It has been often 
 observed that the Ten Commandments do not declare 
 that the other deities do not exist, but simply that they 
 must not be worshipped. In not denying their existence, 
 the Ten Commandments are strictly in the order of 
 science. The meaning of the first commandment was, 
 " Thou shalt set up no other instinct or impulse and no 
 physical source of human blessings before the dictates of 
 conscience as thy God." 
 
 That men do to-day set up other sources of gratifica- 
 tion than conscience and other springs of blessing than 
 Duty itself as the objects of reverence, no one will deny. 
 Nor will anyone who understands the workings of human 
 nature fail to see that such preference for lower satisfac- 
 tions and for the sources of less precious benefits is the 
 cause of infinite mischief to nations. 
 
 2. The second commandment is something more than 
 a special application and elaboration of the first. The 
 injunction " Thou shalt have none other gods before me " 
 does not even allude to material symbols or their worship 
 in a systematic cult. Yet the worship of such symbols 
 

 "THE LORD THY GOD" 35 
 
 is the theme of the second commandment : c< Thou shalt 
 not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of 
 anything that is in heaven above, nor in the earth beneath, 
 nor in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not bow 
 down to them nor worship them. For I the Lord thy 
 God am a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers upon 
 the children unto the third and fourth generation of 
 them that hate me, and showing mercy unto thousands 
 in them that love me and keep my commandments." 
 
 It has been maintained that the reason why images 
 are forbidden is because of the invisibility of the Creator 
 of the universe. But had the God of the Jews been, 
 as Matthew Arnold maintained, the principle of social 
 righteousness as a real factor in life, there would have 
 been a still more cogent reason for forbidding graven 
 images. If the prophets meant to set up a personal 
 agency who fashioned the world as a man might make a 
 watch, there would be some justification in making him 
 in the image of a human being, with face and hands and 
 bodily parts. But if their God was Righteousness, an 
 invisible, spiritual principle within and between the souls 
 of men themselves, images would be felt to be preposter- 
 ous and misleading. There is no doubt that the human 
 face itself reflects wisdom and goodness where these con- 
 trol a man's every act ; but the more one is aware of 
 the social nature of morality and of the consequent in- 
 ability of any individual to reflect its full majesty and 
 meaning, the more one realises the inadequacy of material 
 images as symbols of the moral ideal. 
 
 Thanks, however, to the Old Testament teaching, the 
 religion of the West has outgrown the worship of idols. 
 The specific meaning of the second commandment, there- 
 fore, renders it practically obsolete ; at least it has no 
 bearing in the modern life of Christian peoples. One 
 
36 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 cannot say that even the Roman Catholic use of images is 
 of the nature condemned in the Decalogue. But, while 
 ceremonial worship of idols is not a danger to the English 
 nation, there is national occasion to prohibit by ethical 
 commandment the inward worship of real but evil gods 
 those interests and appetites of which the tribes round 
 about Israel made images. If religion has grown more 
 inward, it is also true that all sins and wickednesses have 
 grown more inward. What are the real gods which 
 compete to-day with wisdom and goodness for homage 
 and obedience ? Clearly the answer is : pleasure, wealth, 
 station, outward gain. But there is also a wholly different 
 type of false gods in vogue, even within the ceremonial 
 cult of systematic religion to-day in the West. There is, 
 it is true, no worship of stocks and stones made into the 
 image of anything in the heavens above or on the earth ; 
 but many beings and powers are worshipped within the 
 soul and in formal ceremonial, not simply as embodiments 
 of the ideal of human goodness, but because of attributes 
 which are morally adventitious. For instance, the Creator 
 of the universe himself, in so far as he is worshipped on 
 account of his power to annihilate or to inflict extraneous 
 punishment, is a case in point. In current religion, the 
 Creator is an intellectual symbol of power and of nature, 
 as well as of goodness. Likewise the worship of the Virgin 
 Mary because she may intercede with another that he 
 forgive us our sins, is not a religious practice which an 
 enlightened conscience can sanction ; it never can be 
 the chief solicitude of a being with a moral nature that 
 another, though it be his creator or saviour, shall forgive 
 him ; his supreme concern must always be that he shall 
 stand unblamed in the chaste sight of the universal con- 
 science within himself. He will then be quite sure but 
 not raised to ecstasy by the thought that he stands 
 

 "THE LORD THY GOD" 37 
 
 unblamed in the eye of every other agent with moral 
 insight. I need not specify further, for my reader can 
 easily discover for himself, how much of modern religious 
 thought and ceremonial, how much of prayer, and how 
 far the present-day sacraments should be forbidden in a 
 wise national Decalogue. 
 
 The first part of the second commandment, if it is to 
 overthrow modern idols and real but false gods, must cover 
 this thought : " Thou shalt not make a god of pleasure, 
 wealth, station, or any outward gain ; neither shalt thou 
 worship any Being, however powerful, except for its 
 human wisdom and goodness." 
 
 Unhappily, as the world tends to-day, it seems probable 
 that for some thousands of years to come the second 
 commandment, thus revised, will not have outlived the 
 need for its constant inculcation. 
 
 The last sentence of the second commandment gives 
 expression to two reasons for not worshipping any other 
 Power than the God of the prophets the jealousy of 
 their God, and the suffering of the children of those who 
 hate him. If the purely ethical interpretation of God be 
 fanciful and false, it is wonderful both that Righteousness 
 would be the only God which was morally justified in 
 brooking no rival, and that in the very nature of things 
 children must suffer for the inattention of parents to 
 uprightness. Re-formulated and brought to fit modern 
 circumstances, the latter half of the second commandment 
 might read, " For I the Lord thy God am a jealous 
 God, visiting through transmission of blood, through the 
 teaching and example of parents and by public opinion, 
 the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third 
 and fourth generation of them that hate me, and in all 
 these ways showing mercy unto thousands in them that 
 love me and keep my commandments." 
 
38 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 The insertion of the phrase " through transmission of 
 blood, through the teaching and example of parents and 
 by public opinion," is such an amendment of the old 
 formulae of religion as the science of our age requires. 
 Indeed, there is a party in the Church of England to-day 
 crying out for the right of the Church to re-state her 
 creeds ; and one of the points they specify is this very 
 reference in the second commandment to the visiting of 
 the sins of the fathers upon the children. The old state- 
 ment is open to the interpretation that some superhuman 
 agency, arbitrarily if not maliciously, in anger if not in 
 spite, punishes children for the wrongdoing of parents. 
 Such an interpretation is demoralising, and has rightly 
 been resented. But when it is given up, there is only 
 the more occasion for repeatedly calling attention to the 
 danger of deterioration by physical inheritance, to the 
 contagion and infection of sin and the evil consequences 
 of close contact with persons of corrupt life. 
 
 If we now bring together the two parts of the second 
 commandment as we have amended it, it will read thus : 
 " Thou shalt not make a god of pleasure, wealth, station, 
 or any outward gain ; neither shalt thou worship any 
 Being, however powerful, except for its human wisdom 
 and goodness ; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, 
 visiting through transmission of blood, through the 
 teaching and example of parents and by public opinion, 
 the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third 
 and fourth generation of them that hate me, and in all 
 these ways showing mercy unto thousands in them that 
 love me and keep my commandments." If one will 
 place this amended form side by side with that which has 
 come down to us from the seventh century B.C., one can 
 the better judge which, as an instrument of ethical teach- 
 ing and of character-building, would prove the more 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 39 
 
 efficient. Nor can anyone deny that if the amended form 
 would prove the better instrument, no sentimental desire 
 to conserve the old for the mere sake of its antiquity 
 should stand in the way of its displacement. If, how- 
 ever, the prevalent intelligence of the nation is not at 
 present equal to such a change in its manual of religious 
 rites, at least, in explanation, teachers and preachers 
 might introduce the amended statement as a modern 
 equivalent of what undoubtedly the Hebrew lawgivers 
 meant. 
 
 3. The third commandment of the Decalogue shows a 
 still closer and a still finer application to religion of 
 national utility as a motive, than do the first and second. 
 In it the lawgiver recognises as a menace to the State 
 the proneness of men to degrade an object of reverence 
 by flippant or violent speech concerning it, and he arms 
 his nation against this danger by a special prohibition. 
 He sees that it is not enough to insist that righteousness 
 must be by a general commandment assigned the first 
 place in the imagination and sentiment of the people ; nor 
 is the safeguard adequate, when he has expressly warned 
 them against the worship of competing deities, and has 
 pointed out the curse which inevitably falls upon the 
 children of the evil-doer. He goes further, and forbids 
 insincere and empty talk where the theme is the Most 
 High. It is evident from the Old Testament that by a 
 perverse use of language social and religious corruption 
 had been spreading throughout the life of the nation ; 
 possibly evil-doers had learned the trick of purposely 
 lowering moral standards and breaking down barriers 
 against self-indulgence, by shameless talk. Even legal 
 forms of oath were wont to be uttered without any 
 corresponding sense of responsibility, and men were in 
 the habit, although they had no intention of fulfilling 
 
40 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 their legal contracts, of calling upon the power of 
 righteousness inherent in the nature of things to punish 
 them if they broke their word. It is likely, moreover, 
 that the highest terms to designate the object of religious 
 worship were increasingly used as talismans in a sort of 
 sorcery. Supernaturalism was getting the better of 
 ethicism in the heart of the people, who imagined that 
 some magic power lay in the appellations of their deity. 
 Primitive people are liable to attribute to the name of a 
 thing the powers of the thing itself. Patriotic statesmen 
 accordingly realised that a name and the thing named are 
 vitally associated in men's thoughts and hearts. Debase 
 the name, they reasoned, and you degrade that which it 
 signifies ; keep the name sacred, and that will help to 
 hallow the thing itself in the minds of the people. From 
 such experience undoubtedly sprang the commandment, 
 " Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in 
 vain." And in the very same form, but on solider 
 grounds of social utility, it may continue to be uttered 
 when Righteousness has become our God. 
 
 The only possible defect of the formula is perhaps in 
 the implication that " the Lord thy God " has but one 
 name, whereas any term that stands for Righteousness 
 must be jealously guarded against malevolent and idle 
 profanation. It would seem also to add to rather than to 
 detract from the significance of the injunction, if it were 
 to stand, " Thou shalt not take the names of the Lord 
 thy God in vain." 
 
 The second part of the third commandment is a vague 
 and feeble apology or warning. It gives as the reason 
 for not taking the name of the Lord in vain that " the 
 Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in 
 vain." What we want to know is why the Lord will not 
 hold him guiltless. What is the reason that the vain 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 41 
 
 taking of his name is forbidden, and what is the measure of 
 the guilt which will be attributed to the desecrator of it ? 
 It would seem to be implied in the words " not guiltless " 
 that after all the offence designated is very slight. This 
 second part of the commandment would gain enormously 
 if what is only hinted at were definitely specified. The 
 political motive of the commandment is to be found in 
 the fact, which I have indicated, that a thing named fails 
 to receive due respect when the terms which stand for it 
 are not held sacred. This motive should be expressly 
 stated in the commandment, if any reason for it is to be 
 given at all. And here is one of the cases where a 
 presentation of the reason for a law adds greatly to the 
 readiness with which it will be obeyed. Perhaps a shorter 
 answer could not be given to the question, Why shall the 
 people of a nation not be allowed to take the names of the 
 Lord their God in vain ? than by saying, " For he lowers 
 respect for Righteousness who taketh its names in 
 vain." 
 
 An indirect advantage of such a formula would be that, 
 without overtly declaring Righteousness to be the God 
 who speaks, this is clearly brought home by implication, 
 and the mind of the listener is prevented from straying 
 into any supernaturalistic or fantastic realm to search for 
 God. On the contrary, he is brought straight to the 
 inmost shrine of duty. As amended, the whole command- 
 ment would read, " Thou shalt not take the names of the 
 Lord thy God in vain ; for he lowers respect for 
 Righteousness who taketh its names in vain." 
 
 4. The fourth commandment aims at the preservation 
 of what many regard as the greatest political device ever 
 invented for the moral education of a nation. One day 
 in seven had long been set apart by tribal neighbours of 
 the Jews for paying religious homage to the stars, the 
 
42 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 moon, and the seasons of the year as benefactors and 
 saviours and therefore as gods. But it is generally 
 agreed that, however mythical the character and mission 
 of Moses in other respects, he did, in the fourteenth 
 century before Christ, stand as the representative of the 
 party who were trying to give an ethical significance to 
 the religious practices of the Jews, and to this end 
 transformed the appointed day of rest into an instrument 
 of ethical culture. 
 
 Therefore the question whether, in a Decalogue devised 
 solely from national expediency, the fourth command- 
 ment shall stand, depends upon the conclusion we come 
 to as to the value of one day of rest in seven to be 
 devoted to thinking upon one's responsibilities to one's 
 nation and one's privileges as a citizen and a man. 
 
 The more one reflects about it without bias or bigotry, 
 the more one sees, in the first place, that a periodical day 
 of cessation from labour and business throughout the 
 community is an enormous physical and intellectual gain 
 to the nation, and to every individual in it. But, in the 
 second place, an ethical sabbath is something more than 
 a mere stopping of the routine of earning a livelihood. 
 Any holiday devoted to merry-making is a day of rest, 
 and possibly in many cases merely as a recreation is more 
 effective than a day devoted to philosophic and humanistic 
 contemplation. If, however, the wider interests and ends 
 of humanity are to be brought home to every man and 
 woman in the community, it would seem that a day for 
 ethical reflection is an indispensable necessity, however 
 many other days for mere rest and amusement are 
 established. To abandon such a day without finding 
 some equivalent means of illustrating the spiritual unity 
 and the ideal purpose of the nation, would be to loosen 
 the ethical foundations of our civilisation. It is not 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 43 
 
 enough that the earning of a livelihood should cease at 
 regular intervals and the people be refreshed by mental 
 relaxation. The renewed vigour must be directed 
 towards the great ends and principles of manhood ; other- 
 wise the very refreshment of mental vitality may mean little 
 more than an increased power to be exploited by others and 
 ultimately expended in increased drudgery in earning a 
 living, or in a more strenuous accumulation of worldly 
 possessions and cares. The nation-builder desires to 
 detach the mind of the people from business and the 
 service of self, chiefly in order to attach it to the claims 
 of the commonwealth and to the glories of art, science, 
 and civilisation. Such being the case, the Deuteronomic 
 sabbath, as giving leisure and opportunity for reflection, 
 stands pre-eminent as an educational invention. It 
 possibly exceeds in its beneficent effects the Christian 
 institutions of preaching, of Baptism as the rite of initia- 
 tion into the Church, and of the Communion as the rite 
 of the renewal of fidelity among its members to the cause 
 of social righteousness on earth. The regular and closely 
 recurring sabbaths, because devoted to the ideals of the 
 Jewish nation, stemmed the tide of its besetting absorp- 
 tion in merely outward and materialistic occupations, and 
 in the pleasures and diversions of the senses. These 
 ethical school-days turned the minds of the people to the 
 reverent recognition of the claims of the community and 
 of posterity. 
 
 In this Deuteronomic version of the fourth command- 
 ment, it is quite plain that the Lord's day was man's day. 
 It was Lord's day because it was man's day working 
 man's rest day. This becomes more evident when it is 
 understood that the Lord was nothing else than the just 
 relationship of man with man considered as the clue to 
 national prosperity. It was this sense of the social ideal 
 
44 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 as the only power which can deliver a people out of 
 personal and tribal evils, that led the prophets and law- 
 givers to trace to " the Lord their God " the escape of 
 their people out of the land of bondage. As a fact of 
 sociological dynamics, it was their ideal of tribal loyalty, 
 their obedience to the claim of the community upon them, 
 their allegiance to the will of the tribe itself, that had 
 actually been the cause of their deliverance. 
 
 The fourth commandment as it stands in Deuteronomy 
 is, therefore, superbly ethical and naturalistic. The only 
 question as to its fitness arises from the distinctively 
 Jewish nationalism involved in it. Can a commandment 
 which so exclusively refers to the Jews ever have the 
 same binding force upon Englishmen or Americans or 
 Japanese as it has had upon the descendants of Israel ? 
 Jewish teachers of Jewish boys in England say that an 
 ordinary Christian can have no conception of the intense 
 grip which the Old Testament, and especially such com- 
 mandments as this fourth, have upon the imagination 
 and feelings of a Jewish boy as compared with their 
 effect upon Gentile children. The hold does not always 
 last through life ; yet nothing but the tremendous pressure 
 of the new opportunities for wealth and power which the 
 Gentile nations now offer to the Jew can weaken it. 
 
 Four different courses seem open to the educational 
 statesman. In the first place, although envying the 
 greater incentive to righteousness which the Jewish boy 
 receives, he may say that nevertheless the influence of 
 the commandment over the non-Jewish Christian is not 
 to be despised, and must be accepted gratefully for what 
 it is worth. Or, in the second, an alternative to the 
 direct adoption of the Jewish commandment as it stands 
 would be the formulation and promulgation of a corre- 
 sponding but wholly Anglican commandment. It would 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 45 
 
 be possible that on its own authority and from free 
 initiative, without any servility to the Old Testament as 
 a book of divine revelation, the Government of England, 
 backed by the deliberate intelligence and will of the 
 whole people, should authorise the keeping of an ethical 
 seventh day of rest, and that in the formulation of this 
 new law a reference should be made not to Jewish history 
 but to English. English history, just as much as Jewish, 
 is an instance of a people being delivered by self-control 
 and the incarnation of justice in its institutions, and of 
 wisdom growing out of national sufferings and trials. 
 Nor is this all. Already for more than a thousand years 
 the keeping of an ethical seventh day of rest has been a 
 prime and persistent factor in leading the nation on from 
 point to point of advance in social justice towards freedom 
 and prosperity. We might well, in our formulation of 
 an English commandment, base the institution not on 
 pre-Anglican and foreign foundations, but on the bed- 
 rock of England itself. 
 
 A third policy would be to universalise, to make cosmo- 
 politan or international, the formula ordering the keeping 
 of a seventh day for ethical meditation. It would be 
 possible so to revise the fourth commandment as to 
 remove from it all local historical colouring, and thus 
 render it applicable to every nation and to persons who 
 have replaced patriotism by a world-wide humanism. 
 One cannot help believing, however, that the statesmen 
 of any nation would find irresistible arguments against a 
 universalised as compared with a nationalised injunction 
 ordering a day of ethical meditation. Japan, for instance, 
 like England, could find in her own history adequate 
 arguments for setting a day apart for the worship of the 
 Japanese ideal. If there be no reasons of expediency for 
 referring to the Jewish origin of the institution of sabbath, 
 
46 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 every nation could tinge its own commandment with the 
 life of its own past, and point it towards its own future. 
 
 But a fourth policy, open to the educational statesman, 
 will probably commend itself as altogether best. Each 
 nation's Decalogue should bear the imprint of its own 
 evolution ; but any nation which adopts an ethical 
 sabbath does, as an actual event in history, borrow 
 from the Jews. Hence England's fourth commandment 
 should point both to English and Jewish history. We 
 cannot escape the fact that the Jews originated and main- 
 tained the observance of an ethical sabbath, until it finally 
 was adopted by other peoples. 
 
 It is true that in the Deuteronomic fourth command- 
 ment there are elements which in their literal application 
 are obsolete. No one now, formulating out of present- 
 day experience and circumstances an analogous com- 
 mandment, would refer to the ox, the ass and cattle 
 as typical forms of property ; nor would he speak 
 of sojourners from a foreign country as strangers 
 within the gates. But these terms in no wise obscure 
 the principle involved ; nor would there be any gain 
 from substituting for "manservant and maidservant" 
 " butler, parlourmaid, chauffeur, and shop assistant." 
 What is more, the obsolete reference lends the charm of 
 quaintness. 
 
 While there is nothing in the contents of the Deutero- 
 nomic version to offend, it may be possibly objected that 
 there is not an adequate specification of the positive ends 
 to which the sabbath day is to be appropriated. There is 
 no overt statement to the effect that the day is to be kept 
 sacred to deliberation upon the higher ends of life. Yet 
 this is implied. And the implication would not fail to be 
 fully felt, if a purely ethical and naturalistic denotation were 
 assigned by teachers to the words " the Lord thy God." 
 
"THE LORD THY GOD" 47 
 
 If one's God impresses the imagination chiefly by such 
 attributes as infinity, omnipotence and omniscience, a day 
 appropriated to his worship might not necessarily involve 
 meditation on one's own ideals of humanity. But the 
 moment we understand the words to point to the social 
 ideal itself as the living soul of the actual nation, the day 
 declared to be " the sabbath of the Lord our God " becomes 
 identical in import with a day set aside for reflection upon 
 the higher ends of our life. Then, when we are asked 
 to keep the sabbath day holy, holiness, meaning for us 
 sacred to the god we worship, must at the same time 
 mean sacred to the cause of the good in the world. All 
 religious ceremony and keeping of days, when the god 
 is Righteousness itself, becomes ethical ; for how can 
 ceremony be other than ethical when it focusses attention 
 upon the standards of truth, beauty and righteousness ? 
 A focussing of the attention in this manner is in reality 
 nothing more nor less than a committing of the will to 
 the actualisation of ideals not yet embodied in daily life. 
 Thus in a purely ethical religion even the distinction 
 between ceremonial and morality falls away ; the cere- 
 monial can never become homage to an outside agency ; 
 it must always produce either at least a hungering after 
 righteousness, or, better still, in addition, the actual 
 turning of the soul towards the source whence refresh- 
 ment will come a reaching forth of the hand for the 
 bread of blessing. When the sabbath day becomes 
 purely one of meditation upon the higher ends of life, 
 the keeping of it becomes as much a moral duty as any 
 act of kindness, honesty, or bravery. We cannot 
 separate the practice of morality from the doing of those 
 preparatory acts of spiritual discipline which store up 
 motive power within our minds, and make us ready 
 against temptations and for occasions of heroic energy. 
 
48 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 When the term " God " is understood ethically, there will 
 be no danger that the sabbath of the Lord our God will 
 become simply a day of rest which might be diverted to 
 the pursuit of amusement or to the praise of a super- 
 human agency. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THYSELF " 
 
 THE four commandments which we have thus far passed 
 in review may be specially designated as religious, if we 
 may define religion to be the setting up of any power as 
 a god ; they enjoin the worship of morality as an active 
 principle in human life. But if they are religious because 
 they exact worship, they are moral because that which 
 they set up for worship is morality. Thus it is not 
 because religion and morality have anything inherently 
 identical in their nature, but because in this special case 
 morality is deified, that in these commandments the 
 two blend. A commandment that deifies anything is 
 religious ; only one which deifies duty is moral. Here 
 we see plainly that religion and morality, although not 
 identical, are not necessarily antagonistic forces or anti- 
 thetical concepts. 
 
 This distinction between religion and morality, and the 
 blending of the two which may exist in one commandment, 
 can be brought out in another way. If we contrast the 
 last six with the first four injunctions of the Decalogue, 
 we note that the last six may be summed up as saying 
 " Be good," and the first four as saying " Love goodness." 
 
 Now, to love goodness is not the same as to be good, but 
 
 49 4 ' 
 
50 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 the two are activities psychologically and dynamically in 
 vital connection. To love righteousness is to set it up as 
 an object of reverent attention, to let one's craving go 
 out towards it. Such a yearning must precede the being 
 good in the mind of one who has been either indifferent 
 or bad. To say " Be good " to a man who is indifferent 
 or bad, is to overlook the preliminary steps in becoming 
 good. To say " Focus your attention without bias or 
 prejudice upon goodness," is to suggest what even the 
 morally apathetic or antagonistic may easily do. Such a 
 turning of the attention may even be motived by side 
 issues or by aims positively selfish, and still the fixing 
 of the attention may work the desired transformation. 
 Since to love goodness is to turn the attention respectfully 
 towards it, it is the same as setting up goodness as a god ; 
 it is equivalent to worshipping goodness. The injunction, 
 therefore, is religious. But inasmuch as to love goodness 
 is likely to make a bad man good, we see how it is that 
 religion dynamically must precede morality. Thus those 
 are right who say that unless a man be religious he can- 
 not be moral. But this is true only in case the religion 
 referred to is ethical ; not every religion induces morality 
 in its devotee. But the commandment " Love goodness," 
 if it be obeyed, makes a man morally serious, humble, 
 strenuous, and enthusiastic ; it gives momentum and 
 gladness to duty ; it transforms moral tasks from irksome 
 constraints into joyous mental activities. The first four 
 commandments, by enjoining loyalty to the universal and 
 inherent principle of morality, attempt to secure that 
 inwardness of disposition which is requisite to complete 
 righteousness. They look to the character side, and to 
 the whole of character to the inward fountain-head or 
 reservoir of right activity. In contrast to them, the last 
 six are particular rather than universal commandments. 
 
"THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF" 51 
 
 They consider specific relationships and duties and point 
 to particular persons, and they are in the main external 
 rather than inward. They are concerned more with what 
 is to be done than with the ultimate motive for doing it. 
 
 Such being the points of contrast between the first four 
 and the last six commandments when interpreted psycho- 
 logically, it is easy to see the literary design and skill of 
 the makers of the Decalogue. Their order and arrange- 
 ment is based upon the principle that mental and moral 
 development advances from the acceptation of universal 
 principles and ideals to the ready carrying out of par- 
 ticular and concrete duties. It is as if the framer of the 
 Decalogue reasoned : If the people will but reverence the 
 universal principles of the good life, an impetus will be 
 given to their character which will bear them on spon- 
 taneously to do the thing that is right, and an illumination 
 will be shed from the universal principles, enabling the 
 mind to discover the right path. 
 
 5. The commandment enjoining filial reverence has 
 been with delicate judgment placed immediately after the 
 religious commandments. For it, more than any other 
 of the last six, partakes of the nature of religion. 
 " Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may 
 be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
 Here is still reverence as the dominant attitude. It is 
 a commandment which enjoins looking up, bowing down, 
 obeying. But here the homage is to be rendered not to 
 the universal and inter-personal principles of right con- 
 duct, but to the two persons who from natural inclination 
 and under pressure of social sanction inevitably embody 
 for the child and illustrate and inculcate laws of right 
 conduct. The fifth commandment insists that each of 
 us shall enshrine at the right hand of righteousness 
 the two beings most immediately responsible for our 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
52 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 existence and most likely to sacrifice mere self for our 
 spiritual as well as our physical nurture. 
 
 It is the commandment which pre-eminently binds 
 together the generations of men. At first glance it seems 
 to be wholly backward-looking and history-searching, but 
 its ultimate motive is not retrospective. Its object is to 
 preserve in the new generation the highest moral tradi- 
 tions of the past. And who can more easily hand on the 
 torch of national idealism to any child than its own 
 parents ? Indeed, it is a plainly discernible fact that 
 even where nation-builders have exacted no such duty of 
 parents, these, however limited and prejudiced, do stamp 
 their own moral ideas and sometimes well-nigh indelibly 
 upon the minds of their children. Their ideas, em- 
 bodied in homely adages, may not rise in dignity of 
 meaning above worldly wisdom, shrewd prudence and 
 cunning ; but, such as they are, being the actual principles 
 or the ideal standard of conduct of the parents, they are 
 communicated in season and out of season to the children. 
 Wherever the father and mother have not neglected this 
 most natural function, it has had its desired effect. Even 
 the wisest and greatest of men may scarcely outgrow to 
 the end of life the crude and unsystematic but reiterated 
 and insistent teachings of illiterate parents. 
 
 This parental function of transmitting moral traditions 
 was seized hold of by the Jewish statesmen and converted 
 into an instrument of national character-building. The 
 parent was made the ethical and religious teacher, and 
 every child became a pupil of his progenitors. The 
 teacher-function of parents was thus lifted up, regulated 
 and strengthened by the commandment of the State 
 exacting homage from children to parents. It is true that 
 overtly nothing is commanded but the looking upward 
 and backward of the child to his elders and superiors in 
 
1 
 
 "THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF" 53 
 
 power. It seems to be a commandment only for the 
 child, but in presupposition and in fact it imposes an 
 imperative upon parents. It constrains them by sum- 
 moning them to rise to the standard which the word 
 " honour " implies. The actual effect also of this com- 
 mandment has for ages been to chasten parents quite as 
 much as children to a sense of the dignity of the moral 
 bond between them. 
 
 In a second way also is this fifth commandment more a 
 forward-gazing than a backward-looking precept. The 
 reason given for honouring parents is quite undisguisedly 
 not for the parents 7 sake, nor because they are un- 
 questionably worthy, but for the children's and children's 
 children's sake. You are enjoined to honour your father 
 and your mother that you may live long in the land which 
 the Lord God gives you. Where parents are honoured, 
 the family will endure ; and, through the family, the 
 nation. 
 
 One might wish, however, that the reason given had 
 not been made to seem so exclusively a selfish appeal. 
 There is an implication that the child wholly for his own 
 sake is to honour his parents, whereas in fact it is equally 
 for the nation's. It is especially for the sake of his 
 own descendants and the remoter future of the nation. 
 At the heart of this commandment is implicitly the 
 imperative that parents shall honour children and 
 children their yet unborn posterity. So much deeper and 
 more essential for the perpetuity of a nation and its 
 service to other nations of the world is posterity-worship 
 than ancestor-worship, that one might wish that our 
 statesmen to-day could turn this commandment inside 
 out, making its inmost motive explicit : " Thou shalt 
 honour thy sons and daughters and their sons and 
 daughters, that thy nation may live long in the land 
 
54 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 which the Lord thy God giveth it." It is true that 
 honour to offspring may not consist in obedience ; and 
 yet a close looking to the needs of offspring is not unlike 
 obedience to their nature and claim. 
 
 6. Two objections to the sixth commandment, " Thou 
 shalt do no murder," may perhaps be offered which will 
 not be accounted captious. In the modern mind the 
 term " murder " does not include the act of suicide ; and 
 many a person who would morally shrink with horror 
 from the former, counts that those who are utterly weary 
 of life are quite justified in terminating their own 
 existence. The frequency of suicide, moreover, calls for 
 a special moral condemnation of it by the organised 
 social conscience of the nation. Such a condemnation 
 would be by no means futile in effect ; for there is perhaps 
 no crime, on the one hand, so liable to be practised 
 if it is socially condoned, and, on the other hand, so 
 easily prevented by public disapproval. Persons inclined 
 to morbid self-depreciation and despair are toned up to 
 courage and self-control in a society which insists upon 
 the inviolability of every individual life. 
 
 A second objection to the formula "Thou shalt do no 
 murder " is that the crime it forbids is only the extreme 
 outcome of acts and dispositions which in their very 
 nature lead up to it ; and yet that the condemnation of 
 the extreme form of a pernicious deed does not necessarily 
 spread its deterrent influence over the preliminary stages 
 of the noxious growth. It is possible that a person well 
 instructed in the injunction "Thou shalt not kill," and 
 emotionally responsive to it, might feel himself justified 
 in committing physical or mental injuries upon himself or 
 another, provided he guarded himself against the fatal 
 degree. We want a commandment which shall unequivo- 
 cally cover with condemnation not only the act of hatred 
 
"THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF" 55 
 
 which is murderous in tendency or recklessly defiant of 
 consequence, but also the act which to any degree inflicts 
 unnecessary mental or physical suffering or incapacity. 
 
 Nor is it enough that a commandment should cover 
 only those injuries which are inflicted through hatred. 
 There are countless ways by which injury is done where 
 there is not only no murderous intent but even no malice. 
 For mere love of pleasure people indulge in acts which 
 diminish or destroy their own or another's health, and 
 ultimately may even induce death. From tenderest 
 motives, also, of kindness and desire to please, they 
 connive, either through thoughtlessness or in defiance of 
 remoter consequences, at acts which sometimes terminate 
 in death and very frequently in weakness and disease. 
 
 Some forms of personal impurity, moreover, are to be 
 condemned not under the category of unfaithfulness, but 
 under that of injury to oneself or others. Mere excess of 
 sensual indulgence is of this nature. Such a classification 
 of vice of this order is of great importance, because the 
 failure of marriage in many cases is to be traced to the 
 lack of any condemnation by public opinion of excess, 
 provided there is no unfaithfulness which could be cen- 
 sured as a violation of the exclusiveness of the conjugal 
 relation. 
 
 Also, laxity of life among those who are not married may 
 fall under different condemnations. It may be anti-social, 
 not only because it undermines the family life and vitiates 
 the functions of paternity and maternity, but because it 
 injures, when indulgence is excessive, the health and 
 strength of the individuals themselves. The public con- 
 science is far from adequately enlightened as to the indirect 
 and remoter evils entailed by excess in this direction. 
 
 It is, of course, true that a sixth commandment thus 
 condemning all infliction of injury would not touch the 
 
56 NATIONAL. IDEALISM 
 
 question of extra-conjugal immorality, provided there 
 were no excess ; but what I am now insisting upon is 
 that neither will any universalising of the seventh com- 
 mandment reach the sin of excess as distinct from acts 
 which, while temperate in degree, are committed under 
 conditions that induce consequences disadvantageous 
 to society. 
 
 If we so widen the sixth commandment that it shall 
 condemn mental and physical injuries to oneself or others, 
 there will accrue still another great gain : a logical thinking 
 out and a practical application of it will include a censure 
 of drunkenness and every degree of indulgence in in- 
 toxicating drinks which induces ill health or decreases 
 physical efficiency. A nation's manual of moral edifica- 
 tion cannot omit from its summary of the elementary 
 principles of duty all censure of a form of vice 
 which among the peoples of the West has become a 
 national calamity and a cause of racial deterioration. 
 Such omission in the past may not be cited as a justi- 
 fication for a like omission in the future ; for the history 
 of Christendom is a history of the failure of religion and 
 education to prevent drunkenness and short of drunken- 
 ness degrees of excess in alcoholic drinking which have 
 perhaps produced evils equal to those of drunkenness. 
 
 For these various reasons, therefore, I cannot help 
 believing that, as soon as the religious leaders of our 
 nation become more interested in meeting present-day 
 issues than in perpetuating ancient formulae, they will 
 revise the sixth commandment in such a way that, whatever 
 the final wording may be, the contents will be equivalent 
 to saying, " Thou shalt do no injury to the mind or body 
 either of thyself of another, unless the general welfare 
 requires it to be done by thee." 
 
 7. The exact form of the seventh commandment, "Thou 
 
"THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF" 57 
 
 shalt not commit adultery," will survive even less well than 
 that of the sixth the kind and degree of scrutiny, from 
 the point of view of national education, which we are 
 applying. In the first place, the word " adultery " is a legal 
 term. The commandment as it stands is therefore a pro- 
 hibition of certain acts only beyond the limits sanctioned 
 by political authority. To anyone not married it has no 
 application. To such a person it can be made to apply 
 only by indirect inference. In the absence of any com- 
 mandment against extra-conjugal indulgence, teachers 
 might perhaps be justified in saying that at the heart of 
 the seventh commandment undoubtedly lies the principle 
 of purity, which has a wider application than that covered 
 by the actual wording ; and that therefore the spirit, if 
 not the letter, of the commandment justifies our using it 
 as a proof that the national consciousness condemns all 
 forms of unfaithfulness and excess. Such subtlety of 
 reasoning may be justified, however, only upon two 
 grounds. First, it must be shown that psychologically 
 the minds of the people do spontaneously extend the 
 application beyond the specific evil condemned. My 
 own judgment is that they do not do this, and the Old 
 and the New Testaments furnish hundreds of proofs that 
 the prophets, teachers and evangelists came to the rescue 
 by supplementing the commandment with many other 
 injunctions, direct, inward, vivid, and telling. Unfortun- 
 ately, these other injunctions were not taught nor com- 
 manded to be taught by Church or State diligently unto 
 the children, nor to be talked of daily, nor to be bound 
 as frontlets before the eyes. The more carefully worded, 
 then, must be the commandment which the Anglican 
 Church requires to be committed to memory by every 
 confirmand and repeated in the hearing of every com- 
 municant each time before partaking of the Lord's Supper. 
 
58 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 In the second place, in order to justify the retention 
 of the seventh commandment as it stands in the Book of 
 Common Prayer, it must be shown that it is impossible to 
 revise it and still keep it effective in compass and form. 
 But such is not the case. The commandment could easily 
 be enlarged and yet be kept much shorter than several of 
 the others. 
 
 But not only is the seventh commandment inefficient 
 because merely legal ; it is inefficient because it condemns 
 only the outward act and does not throw its censure in- 
 ward upon those intentions and purposes, prompted by 
 appetite, which almost inevitably, if entertained, lead to 
 acts which an enlightened social conscience must condemn. 
 Although such a censure of the inward motives which 
 incite to immoral acts is not wholly lacking in the Ten 
 Commandments, it is, however, misplaced : we find it 
 in the tenth commandment. Yet when the Decalogue is 
 being revised, surely there must be a bringing over into 
 the seventh commandment of the injunction "Thou shalt 
 not desire thy neighbour's wife " ; or if exactly this formula 
 be not attached to the prohibition " Thou shalt not commit 
 adultery," the only reason for not doing so must be that it 
 also has been found inadequate. And it will be seen upon 
 scrutiny to share the same deficiency which renders the 
 wording of the seventh commandment inadequate. The 
 injunction "Thou shalt not desire thy neighbour's wife" 
 is again a moral commandment cast into a merely legal and 
 therefore cramping mould. One's neighbour's wife is 
 not the only person whom one must not desire. In the 
 first place, we note in this injunction the implication that 
 the commandment is for men only, as if there were no 
 occasion that any word should be said to women. It is 
 quite possible that when it was formulated, women had 
 so little individuality and were allowed so little liberty 
 
"THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF" 59 
 
 that it never entered the mind of law-givers to keep them 
 moral except by the alert oversight of the husband, the 
 pressure of public opinion, and the fear of being detected. 
 It is also possible that the nature of women was so little 
 understood that their conventional propriety was inter- 
 preted as passivity or neutrality, and that therefore no 
 occasion was felt for the injunction "Thou shalt not 
 desire thy neighbour's husband." But such an inter- 
 pretation of woman is not true, nor is it even an honour 
 to her. For passivity in and of itself is no more bene- 
 ficent or pure than positive desire and the expression of 
 it, provided the desire be in degree and under conditions 
 not deleterious to society. The seventh commandment, 
 then, must not only have incorporated in it the first 
 injunction of the tenth commandment, but that injunction 
 itself must be made unequivocally to apply to women 
 as well as to men, and to the unmarried as well as to 
 the married. Such a revision would be achieved if 
 instead of " Thou shalt not desire thy neighbour's wife " 
 the injunction stood, " Thou shalt not desire anyone whom, 
 for the sake of the common life, thou shouldst not have." 
 Were this to be incorporated into the seventh command- 
 ment, the whole might be made to read, " Thou shalt not 
 commit adultery ; neither shalt thou even so much as 
 desire anyone whom, for the sake of the common life, thou 
 shouldst not have." 
 
 8. The eighth commandment is defective, and there- 
 fore inefficient, in the same way as the seventh. In 
 the first place, stealing is only a legal term. Until the 
 government of a State has by legislation stamped an 
 act as theft, it is not theft. But many a withholding 
 of wealth from another, and many a taking of property 
 from another, although not branded by law as a crime, is 
 gravely pernicious, causes untold suffering throughout 
 
60 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 a nation, and is altogether anti-social and disintegrating 
 to humanity in its effects. 
 
 In all nations the laws of property fall shockingly short 
 of what the enlightened social conscience to-day is 
 demanding. Thousands of acts ought to be stamped as 
 stealing which have not yet been placed under legal 
 censure. Were this done, tens of thousands of persons 
 who now not only go scot free, but receive social homage 
 and moral deference, would be branded as thieves. But 
 until the government of the State actually condemns an 
 act as theft, it is a rhetorical licence to anticipate such a 
 condemnation by so denominating the act. The word 
 should be kept as a legal term ; and those persons who 
 extend its meaning, instead of enlarging the insight of 
 those who do not yet understand the ethics of property, 
 only offend and harden the prejudices of the rich and the 
 unthinkingly conservative. 
 
 My personal judgment is that what the law has laid 
 down as the rights of property must be so respected. 
 The law may be outrageously unjust, but the protest 
 against injustice, at least where constitutional procedure 
 is possible, must not take the form of a self-interested 
 breaking of the law. On the contrary, those who would 
 reform it must the more scrupulously obey it, in order that 
 by agitation and organisation, unvitiated by any evidence 
 of lawlessness or of a personal grievance embittering 
 them, they may convert the majority of the nation to 
 their own sense of the injustice of the existing legal 
 practice. The eighth commandment as it stands, there- 
 fore, is in so far good ; but it must proceed to indicate 
 the whole duty of ownership. The most enlightened 
 social conscience of our day sees plainly that it is a wrong 
 against society for anyone to take from others, although 
 not legally prohibited, what the welfare of the com- 
 
"THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF" 61 
 
 munity requires that those others should have. But it 
 sees still further. It is not only the active and aggressive 
 taking that the disinterested judgment of men to-day 
 condemns ; under its censure falls also the passive 
 retention of any forms of wealth, of any kinds of the 
 means of health, happiness and social efficiency, which 
 the welfare of the community requires that others should 
 have. 
 
 Let it be noted that such a statement as this does not 
 place the test of the right to any wealth on the part of 
 any person as many individualists and anarchists would 
 have it in the mere fact that that person wants it, or 
 even in the fact that he individually is in dire need of it. 
 A man may want and may need a thing, and yet for him 
 to possess it may be against the welfare of organised 
 society of the majority of individuals and, in the long 
 run, of all. We need a formula which shall plainly set 
 the lasting welfare of the nation above either the wants 
 or the needs of the individual. This is not only the 
 ultimate judgment of the enlightened conscience of our 
 day as to what ought to be ; it is also in fact the actual 
 theory and philosophy of legislation in all civilised States. 
 Nay, more, it is the actual practice of all civilised States 
 in great crises when the existence of the nation itself is 
 at stake, or when public opinion is fully aroused and 
 decisive as to the common benefit which would accrue from 
 the taking over by the State of any property hitherto 
 privately owned. 
 
 But the public in general is extremely and dangerously 
 ignorant as to the philosophy of legal property, the 
 practice of governments and the judgment of conscience. 
 This ignorance would be removed in one generation if 
 the Decalogue, which was required to be learnt by heart 
 by every child and repeated in all religious assemblies at 
 
62 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 frequent intervals, condemned not only stealing but all 
 anti-social taking or retention of wealth. If the 
 eighth commandment read, " Thou shalt not steal ; 
 neither shalt thou take or keep from another anything 
 which the social welfare requires that he should possess," 
 then it would unequivocally extend its prohibition be- 
 yond the narrow limits of such anti-social ownership 
 as political enactment had already forbidden under 
 penalties. 
 
 9. The injunction " Thou shalt not bear false witness 
 against thy neighbour," like the three preceding ones, is 
 pedagogically defective. The specification of this one 
 particular form of deception, although it be the worst 
 form, is in danger of seeming to imply that other forms, 
 in which no false witness against a neighbour is per- 
 petrated, do not come under the censure of the pro- 
 hibition. The ninth commandment is also defective, 
 like the eighth, in that it is too exclusively legal ; for 
 undoubtedly the false witness against a neighbour refers 
 to testimony, if not before a court, at least before a 
 recognised judge, and possibly under oath. To do 
 adequately its work of moral instruction and edification, 
 the commandment should be so recast as to stigmatise 
 unequivocally the whole brood of lies. For undoubtedly 
 all misrepresentation of facts tends in the first place 
 to weaken the love and the delicate sense of truthful- 
 ness ; and, in the second place, only false statements so 
 insignificant that they are not worth making, or so 
 palpably false that they do not constitute real deception, 
 can be uttered without weakening mutual confidence 
 and trust, neighbourly love and the zest of spiritual 
 fellowship. 
 
 The ninth commandment is inadequate in another 
 way ; the prohibition against bearing false witness 
 
"THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF" 63 
 
 implies to no one the inclusion of seemingly negative 
 violations of truth omissions to disclose facts which 
 it would be well for the community that others should 
 know. When one reviews the development of any 
 nation, one feels that the social mischief wrought by 
 suppression of facts, by failure to communicate useful 
 and beneficent knowledge, has mightily, although un- 
 obtrusively, retarded for ages the moral and intellectual 
 self-realisation of the mass of the people. Another 
 barrier to progress, possibly equal in evil effects to the 
 withholding of objective facts, has been the suppression 
 or the misrepresentation of private opinions, personal 
 visions, subjective dreams, and idealistic convictions as 
 to right, justice and humanity. As between sup- 
 pression and misrepresentation, possibly the former has 
 done the more mischief. Although it can scarcely be 
 called lying or deception, it may be so prevalent a vice, 
 and each child may begin the practice of it so early, that 
 throughout whole circles of society individualised opinion 
 on the great issues of life may not even come into exist- 
 ence. We ought to have a commandment that will 
 condemn the suppression of one's inward faith. We 
 need an injunction that shall at least imply that it is a 
 duty to think for oneself and speak one's thought. 
 Most men have never even so much as heard that there 
 is a duty of intellectual honesty and intellectual bravery. 
 But enlightened and patriotic citizens are to-day demand- 
 ing that everybody from childhood should be encouraged 
 to give expression to the truth that is in him ; otherwise 
 he will have no motive for thinking for himself, and 
 without motive will not think. They especially insist 
 upon the necessity of each one's communicating his 
 inward ideals to others ; for it is these which contain his 
 valuations as to the various good things of life, and such 
 
64 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 valuations constitute the moral wealth of society. Judg- 
 ments as to values are more precious than knowledge of 
 mere facts. Indeed, specific facts, and even the laws 
 which give their sequence, derive their whole significance 
 from valuations as to the relative worth of things. It 
 would be no excess of subtlety, therefore, for a com- 
 mandment on truthfulness to differentiate between facts 
 and inward convictions ; for that would make it impossible 
 for anyone to hoodwink his conscience into the belief 
 that he had done his whole duty because he had not 
 suppressed or distorted outward facts, although he with- 
 held his own private judgments. 
 
 It might be well to retain the ninth commandment as 
 it stands, but to add to it, so that the whole would read : 
 " Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour ; 
 neither shalt thou misrepresent or withhold from him 
 any fact or any conviction of thine own which it were best 
 for the social life that he should know." In order that 
 the kinship of the principle underlying such an in- 
 junction with that which is at the basis of the preceding 
 and of the following commandment may be evident, it may 
 be well to point out that the idea of property applies not 
 only to outward wealth but to the knowledge of facts 
 and inward ideals. Facts may be in our exclusive 
 possession. Thus they are a thing that can be owned, 
 and the ownership may be right or wrong, social or anti- 
 social. The same is true of those ideals which well up 
 out of the depths of our own spiritual life and are the 
 standards of what life ought to be, as well as the inmost 
 soul of human experience. The knowledge of facts and 
 of ideals, being property, may be distributed justly or 
 unjustly ; it may be destroyed wantonly. The moral 
 principle of the ownership of objective knowledge and of 
 inward vision is the same as that concerning material 
 
"THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF" 65 
 
 wealth. The ultimate owner is always the nation, whose 
 claim must be based on the needs of the nation ; and all 
 private ownership can only be secondary and derived, 
 and can be justified only on grounds of national ex- 
 pediency. This principle, although not expressly stated, 
 is regulative in the form of the ninth commandment 
 which I have suggested, and undoubtedly would make 
 itself felt wherever the commandment was taught. 
 
 10. If we allow the conception of ownership to extend 
 from material objects to facts and inward convictions, we 
 gain a sense of a deeper unity and smoother continuity in 
 the structure of the Decalogue than is superficially per- 
 ceptible. For the tenth commandment, while proceeding 
 upon the ethical conception of property underlying the 
 eighth and ninth, deals with the motive which prompts to 
 anti-social claims upon human goods. The tenth com- 
 mandment is more inward than any of the other neighbour- 
 love injunctions. 
 
 As I have already pointed out, two provinces of moral con- 
 duct which earlier precepts of the Decalogue have outlined 
 are approached again, but from the mental side, in the tenth. 
 With one, " Thou shalt not desire thy neighbour's wife," 
 I have already dealt. The other is the psychological 
 correlative of the commandment " Thou shalt not steal " ; 
 it reads, " Neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, 
 his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, 
 his ass, or anything that is thy neighbour's." 
 
 This specification of forms of property not typical of 
 modern wealth might well be dropped, in order to give 
 place to the fundamental principle of the subordination 
 of private to national ownership. Universalised in content, 
 the injunction might read, "Thou shalt not desire to own 
 anything which it would be best for the community that 
 others should possess." In the seventh and the tenth com- 
 
 5 
 
66 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 mandments as I have recast them, the Decalogue would 
 contain two prohibitions aiming to check wrong-doing at 
 its source in the mind of the doer. That insight of the 
 Deuteronomic statesmen, which from among all anti-social 
 dispositions selected lust and greed as elemental, must 
 commend itself to every observer of human nature. If 
 these two evil impulses are rebuked, there is perhaps no 
 occasion, in a brief summary of moral commandments, 
 that there should be a specification of any other evil 
 motives. Lust and greed, more than any other motives, 
 lead to violations of family duty, to deeds of bodily 
 injury, and refusals to deify Duty. 
 
 Perhaps, before leaving my comment upon the Deca- 
 logue, a word may be in place as to the principle which I 
 have introduced into the last five commandments. In 
 each one of these I have presumed to set up as the 
 universal test or standard of right conduct what might be 
 called the advancement of social welfare, the well-being of 
 the community. I have assumed that what is best for 
 the social life, what is well ultimately for the nation, is 
 right. I have stated that it is morally forbidden to desire 
 anyone, or to take or keep any wealth, or to withhold or 
 distort any truth, or even to desire to own any property, if 
 so doing or so desiring cannot be justified as socially 
 expedient. But I have purposely abstained from using 
 words which would commit me either for or against a 
 purely hedonistic interpretation of the criterion of right 
 conduct. I have not resolved the socially expedient into 
 the happiness-producing ; because, in my judgment, even 
 if universal happiness be the ultimate goal, there is no 
 practical necessity for exacting a recognition of it, as 
 against universal virtue. The ability to judge what is 
 socially expedient does not depend upon a conscious dis- 
 crimination as to whether worthiness or happiness be the 
 
"THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF" 67 
 
 final factor in consciousness ; and the form into which 1 
 have cast the principle will be equally acceptable to either 
 school of ethical theorists. 
 
 I am also fully aware of another lack of finality in the 
 forms I have proposed for the last five commandments, 
 but it is a lack of finality which again I would defend. 
 If it be a deficiency, it is one which, in my judgment, is 
 inevitable in the nature of the case. It may be regretted, 
 but it can be removed only by falling into a worse pre- 
 dicament. The lack to which 1 refer is that, in saying, 
 for instance, " Thou shalt not withhold from anyone a 
 fact which it were best for the community that he should 
 know," one does not specify what facts or class of facts 
 it were best that another should or should not know. 
 Nor does one specify who, in case of doubt or dispute, is 
 to decide whether it be a duty to communicate the know- 
 ledge of any given fact. Of what use, then, it may be 
 asked, is such a statement ? It is evident that a person 
 has no such guidance here as he receives from the injunc- 
 tions " Thou shalt not steal," " Thou shalt not murder," 
 and " Thou shalt not commit adultery," for in these he is 
 referred to the criminal code of his country. But where 
 there is simply a general condemnation of acts or disposi- 
 tions which violate the principle of social expediency, no 
 ultimate court of appeal is specified. In such cases a man 
 must evidently either fall back upon his own moral judg- 
 ment as to what is socially expedient, or upon that of some 
 publicly recognised authority. But there exists no such 
 point of moral sovereignty : that is the reason that moral 
 commandments with purely inward .sanctions, however 
 equivocal, must be taught. 
 
 It would seem that the difficulty here presented must 
 for ever exist, although with the evolution of society it 
 will be continually diminishing. It resolves itself into a 
 
68 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 purely practical problem, and thus it ceases to be a 
 puzzle. It is not an ethical self-contradiction, it is not an 
 inherent antinomy of the moral life ; it involves only an 
 unfulfilled achievement. At the consummation of human 
 perfection there will be a complete harmony between 
 private judgment and positive law, and hence no longer 
 any dilemma as to the seat of moral authority. 
 
 It may not seem to my readers an unnecessary repeti- 
 tion, if I close this chapter by bringing together the in- 
 junctions which I have tentatively suggested as desirable 
 revisions of the Decalogue. As I review them, I have a 
 strong sense that under a rational religion of duty many 
 ancient rules of conduct will rightfully lose their authority, 
 for the occasion will pass away which required them ; and 
 that, with the deepening of experience and with change of 
 circumstance, new principles of conduct must perforce be 
 adopted. But I am at the same time strengthened in the 
 conviction that men will never cease to hear within them 
 the voice of the Social Conscience uttering ten elemental 
 Words of life, different in form, perhaps, from these, but 
 identical in meaning : 
 
 1 . I am the Lord thy God : thou shalt have none other 
 gods before me. 
 
 2. Thou shalt not make a god of pleasure, wealth, 
 station, or any outward gain j neither shalt thou worship 
 any Being, however powerful, except for its human wisdom 
 and goodness ; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous god, 
 visiting through transmission of blood, through the teach- 
 ing and example of parents and by public opinion, the sins 
 of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth 
 generation of them that hate me, and in all these ways 
 showing mercy unto thousands in them that love me and 
 keep my commandments. 
 
 3. Thou shalt not take the names of the Lord thy God 
 in vain ; for he lowers respect for Righteousness who taketh 
 its names in vain. 
 

 "THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF" 69 
 
 4. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it sacred to the 
 higher destinies of man. Six days shalt thou devote to 
 labour and to recreation. But the seventh is the sabbath 
 of the Lord thy God. 
 
 5. Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days 
 may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth 
 thee. 
 
 6. Thou shait do no injury to the mind or body either of 
 thyself or another, unless the general welfare requires it to 
 be done by thee. 
 
 7. Thou shalt not commit adultery ; neither shalt thou 
 even so much as desire anyone whom for the sake of the 
 common life thou shouldst not have. 
 
 8. Thou shalt not steal ; neither shalt thou take or 
 keep from another anything which the social welfare re- 
 quires that he should possess. 
 
 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neigh- 
 bour j neither shalt thou misrepresent or withhold from 
 him any fact or any conviction of thine own which it were 
 best for the social life that he should know. 
 
 10. Thou shalt not desire to own anything which it 
 would be best for the community that others should 
 possess. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE LORD'S PRAYER I TO WHOM ADDRESSED 
 
 ONLY one passage from the Bible takes precedence over 
 the Decalogue in the rank and office assigned it by the 
 makers of our national manual of religious services. The 
 rubric enjoins that the Lord's Prayer, like the Ten Com- 
 mandments, shall be committed to memory by every 
 conrirmand. But, what is more, it is to be repeated 
 twice every morning and twice every evening, throughout 
 the year, in every church of England, by people as well 
 as by priest. It appears twice in the Communion Service, 
 once in each of the rites of Baptism, and once in the 
 ceremonies of Confirmation, of Marriage, of the Visita- 
 tion of the Sick, of Burial, of the Churching of Women, 
 of Commination, and of the Ordering of Deacons and 
 Priests and the Consecration of Bishops, and in the 
 Accession Service. 
 
 This pre-eminence given to the Lord's Prayer is not 
 based on an error of judgment as to its significance com- 
 pared with other passages of the New Testament. Every- 
 body agrees that it is, in the words of Tertullian, a 
 breviarium totius evangelii ; or, as Cyprian characterised 
 it, caelestis doctrine compendium. It stands in the New 
 Testament as the Decalogue in the Old, so that the 
 
 question whether we shall allow it in the future to hold 
 
 70 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 71 
 
 the same place in England's manual of moral edification 
 resolves itself into whether the New Testament message 
 shall overtop that of the Old, together with the question 
 which we have perhaps settled affirmatively in the first 
 chapter whether brief summaries are to be retained as 
 an educational device. 
 
 If the New Testament message and a compendium of 
 it are to continue to hold their ascendency, it must be 
 entirely on grounds of national expediency. From this 
 point of view, no question as to the authorship of the 
 whole or of any part of the Lord's Prayer can enter in, 
 to modify our decision. Were it proved that Jesus 
 Christ was not the author of it, but that it was a form 
 already current in his day, or were it shown that he (as 
 some used to think) simply compiled it, its intrinsic 
 value, if it had any, would not be diminished. Nor, on 
 the other hand, were it to be historically verified that it 
 originally emanated from the lips of Jesus, would this 
 increase its value. Such verification might enhance the 
 worth of Jesus, but not vice versa. The value of a gift 
 precious in itself can increase our debt to the giver, but 
 our general debt to the giver can add nothing to the 
 inherent worth of a gift. 
 
 The fact that the Lord's Prayer appears only in two 
 of the Gospels and neither of these the earliest is 
 irrelevant, from the point of view of its present useful- 
 ness. Nor is its significance in the least lowered because 
 contradictory settings are given to it in Luke and Matthew. 
 It can make no difference to its value for us that Luke 
 represents it as having been given by Jesus at the request 
 of one disciple, who asked, " Lord, teach us to pray, as 
 John also taught his disciples," and that according to 
 Matthew it was given as a part of the Sermon on the 
 Mount. It would make no difference, were scholars 
 
72 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 finally to decide that its setting in Luke is the more 
 likely one, and that it was inserted later into the Sermon. 
 The fact is also of no bearing that in Luke and Matthew 
 the forms of it differ. It cannot concern us that, as the 
 Revised Version shows, in Luke the third and seventh 
 petitions are absent. If these are of direct help to us, 
 and are worthy on that account to hold the eminence 
 in our scheme of national redemption which they have 
 hitherto held, their authority would in no wise be 
 weakened because they lack the sanction of Luke. The 
 case is the same with the word " our " before " Father." 
 Even if the earliest form omits this pronoun, there may 
 be the same reason for our retaining it which perhaps 
 justified those who first inserted it. Likewise with the 
 words, " For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the 
 glory, for ever and ever." 
 
 Nor should any doubt as to what any phrase originally 
 meant deter us from independently attaching to it the 
 interpretation which it might most serviceably bear for 
 us. For instance, as to the meaning of the word " daily " 
 before " bread " : the question for us is not whether the 
 oldest tradition was correct which interpreted the Greek 
 word as meaning constant or continual, or whether it 
 originally meant " the bread of our need " or " our bread 
 of riches." The problem is only as to what we find that 
 it will be best henceforth for us to say and mean. The 
 Revised Version leaves " our daily bread " in the text, 
 but in the margin prints the remark that the meaning in 
 the Greek is " our bread for the coming day." Now, to 
 ask only for our bread for the coming day is a very 
 different thing from asking for our daily bread ; and 
 when we are in the way of revision, if the Lord's Prayer 
 is to be retained at all, it might be very desirable that 
 the people of a nation should be taught to ask daily only 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 73 
 
 for bread for the coming day (whether that was the 
 original meaning or not) ; they would then escape having 
 indelibly stamped into their thought an expression which 
 naturally suggests that we ask for bread for every day of 
 our life, however long we are to live. The principle is 
 clear that, if we keep any part or change any part of the 
 document, it must be wholly because that is the best 
 means which we can discover to serve the national end. 
 
 In order to determine what place, if any, national 
 expediency would justify us in assigning to the Lord's 
 Prayer in the nation's ritual, we must consider, as we 
 did concerning the Decalogue, to whom it is addressed. 
 Who is the Father ? Secondly, by whom is it uttered ? 
 What is the character, the moral worth, the situation, 
 social and economic, and the degree and kind of power, 
 which the prayer implicitly attributes to the petitioners ? 
 Thirdly, are the things asked for, the things most urgently 
 needed and most worth attaining ? Will the people of 
 a nation be best educated morally, intellectually, and 
 physically by asking for and (let us assume) attaining the 
 things which this compendium of the whole Gospel 
 presents as primal and elemental needs ? 
 
 In studying the Decalogue, we found ourselves 
 rationally reconciled both as to the Being from whom 
 the commandments are represented as issuing and as to 
 the persons to whom they are evidently addressed. Their 
 emanation from the community in its idealism as a unit, 
 and their direction towards the individuals who constitute 
 the nation, was a natural and fitting procedure ; it pointed 
 to an abiding sociological activity. And, now, the very 
 fact that the Decalogue was an imperative proceeding from 
 the rational will of the community and challenging into 
 activity the wisdom and goodness latent in the individual 
 members of the nation, leads us to anticipate that we shall 
 
74 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 find the Lord's Prayer to be addressed to that same 
 collective wisdom from which the Ten Commandments 
 issued. 
 
 If one considers, moreover, what had been the religious 
 and national evolution of the Hebrew people from the 
 seventh century B.C., when Deuteronomy was published, 
 to the day when the Lord's Prayer was accepted as a 
 compendium of the whole Gospel, one can scarcely resist 
 assent to the interpretation which I have here suggested. 
 In the seventh century B.C. the Hebrew nation was still 
 fully conscious ; it was centralised in purpose and strong 
 in hope. It was almost dazzled with the vision of future 
 domination and splendour which its self-confidence pro- 
 jected. But now for centuries inward corruption and 
 adverse relationship with surrounding States had broken 
 and disintegrated its centralised idealising will. As a 
 State it had lost its independent sovereignty, and only 
 a remnant remained faithful to its political dream. Nor 
 had the community for centuries been able to bring forth 
 a prophet who could inspire the multitudes as of old. 
 For generations the dispersion of the individuals of the 
 nation had been going on throughout the length and 
 breadth of the Roman Empire. The few Jewish patriots 
 who continued to organise a political party had become 
 overwrought fanatics, almost mad in the intensity with 
 which they hoped against all discouragements. Nor 
 was there among them any man of adequate statesman- 
 ship and personal ascendency. One might almost say 
 that the self-conscious nationality which produced the 
 Decalogue had now grown too feeble to whisper a word 
 or control the wills of individuals. Religious enthusiasm, 
 national insight and purpose, not finding outlet in the 
 government of a politically independent State and in a 
 centralised point of national sovereignty, had become 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 75 
 
 broken up, and found lodgment only in individual and 
 unofficial dreamers and in little voluntary groups of 
 enthusiasts. Religion, as all historians point out, had 
 grown inward, and the Temple worship did not succeed 
 in making it more than the concern of individual souls 
 and of private enterprises in voluntary co-operation. 
 Instead of one point of self-consciousness, centralised in 
 the head of the State, there were many scattered and con- 
 fused sufferers only obscure men, sensitive victims of 
 national calamity. It was as if God had been compelled 
 to flee from the political throne, to disguise himself and 
 hide in the secret recesses of the unassertive hearts of the 
 poor and the meek. 
 
 On the whole, this change is regarded by the moral 
 judgment of every student as one of spiritual advance. 
 In the seventh century B.C. religion had been too exclus- 
 ively political, external and coercive. Statesmen, it is 
 true, had already discovered the civic and historic signifi- 
 cance of universal morality as compared with other causes 
 of national prosperity. They had already realised the need 
 of a national ethical cult. They manifested profound 
 insight into the ways and means by which the claim of 
 right conduct could be forced into the centre of the 
 attention of a whole people, and they set such machinery 
 as is at the disposal of political authority into operation 
 : or this end. Like a mighty mother, the Jewish State 
 t about to instruct and discipline her children. With 
 rm but tender touch she began shaping their characters 
 or citizenship and self-sacrifice in national service. But 
 espite our recognition of the necessity of such political 
 compulsory education in morality, we must admit that, 
 the moment the necessity for it is removed, such domina- 
 tion of the individual by the organised will of the State 
 should cease. Indeed, it was ethically a good fortune to 
 
76 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 the Jewish people that their political sovereignty and 
 organisation were not abolished before an adequate 
 number of the people were able inwardly to perpetuate 
 the insight and passion of the prophets, and that political 
 disaster was now driving them into such religious fellow- 
 ship as we see organising itself under John the Baptist 
 and Jesus. Rather than that religion should remain only 
 external, a lodgment only in the private hearts of intuitive 
 and poetic but powerless patriots was better. 
 
 We cannot deny that national idealism would require 
 that the ethical sovereignty should be, at one and the 
 same time and equally, in outward politics and in the 
 inward aspiration and insight of all the members of the 
 community. But if, when the Jewish people lost political 
 independence, the moral idealism that had once controlled 
 its rulers was not lost or annihilated, but retreated merely 
 from politics to religious ritual and to family worship and 
 education and deepened its hold here, the Yahwistic party 
 who issued the Book of the Law had not failed. For 
 there can be no doubt that throughout the old Jewish 
 dispensation morality had always been too exclusively an 
 outward and political concern, and too dependent upon 
 priestly and princely leadership. The community as an 
 organised force overbore the individuality, self-conscious- 
 ness and moral initiative severally of the members in 
 general. The change from such domination of the 
 community to inwardness and to the self-consciousness 
 of the individual as a moral agent is, as I have said, 
 recognised by all historians as the chief line of evolution 
 from Judaism to organised Christianity. It is an advance 
 from the national to the individual point of view, from the 
 political to the psychological. But the yearning for 
 fellowship and ultimately for the full and political inde- 
 pendence of a spiritual community must become unbear- 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 77 
 
 ably intense in hearts passionately possessed by that 
 general will of humanity which is too big and powerful 
 for the isolated soul to contain, which demands a city 
 and then a nation for expression and for scope of creative 
 work, and which may some day unify all the peoples of 
 the earth. To no psychologist of the inner religious life, 
 therefore, as it feeds and is fed by the same life in friends, 
 neighbours, and fellow-citizens, will it seem at all strange 
 to interpret the Lord's Prayer as a challenge of individual 
 souls whoever they may be to the general Will of the 
 Community. This Will had somehow for generations 
 failed to actualise itself ; it had been present, but only as 
 one who is a sovereign by right but not in fact, and who 
 may for a time succeed only in disturbing the actual 
 order of social life by stimulating hopes and fears. 
 
 The full reasonableness of this interpretation can only 
 reveal itself to us gradually, as we consider more and more 
 closely the implications of the Lord's Prayer concerning 
 the character and situation of the persons who are to utter 
 it and the social and moral significance of the specific 
 blessings asked for. Before entering, however, into these 
 questions, I invite my reader to consider first in how far 
 the method I am using imputes my own interpretation of 
 religion to the conscious thought of the New Testament 
 writers and characters ; and, secondly, I shall detain him 
 ver certain points of difference and of identity between 
 the ordinary interpretation of the Power addressed in the 
 Lord's Prayer, and that which I am advocating. 
 
 It is possible that the New Testament writers and the 
 personages whom they present were controlled by certain 
 ideas as the regulative principles of their conduct, and yet 
 that they did not have these consciously before their mind. 
 It is possible also that they illustrate and exhibit in their 
 writings mental processes of which they consciously knew 
 
78 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 nothing, yet which to-day are perfectly familiar to the 
 disciplined psychologist. He, for instance, may detect 
 from their words and conduct that they had arrived at a 
 certain point of view and become filled with a certain 
 enthusiasm, according to the law of the association of ideas. 
 They then are to him a particular instance of a regular 
 sequence in mental action which is found to be operative 
 in every human mind. Yet they themselves may be 
 absolutely unacquainted with the mental principle of which 
 they are a living embodiment. They may possibly not 
 have heard that there is such a thing as an association 
 of ideas by contiguity or frequency of repetition, or in 
 any other way. 
 
 As the law of association is a description not of how the 
 mind ought to act, but only of the way it does proceed, it 
 may be better to compare the moral ideas which control 
 the mind of the New Testament writers to the exactly 
 analogous case of the laws of logic, which act as regulative 
 principles of thinking in the minds of people who have 
 never heard of logic and might not even be able to under- 
 stand what a normative principle is. A person may be 
 perfectly logical and illustrate in his reasoning the law of 
 identity and the law of excluded middle, yet know 
 nothing of either. A trained logician could detect instances 
 of perfect syllogisms in the reasoning of those who might 
 even resent the notion that anything in their mental 
 operations could be so labelled. When, therefore, 
 psychologists or logicians presume to understand the 
 mental operations of another man better than he does 
 himself, they are not guilty of setting themselves up as 
 greater than he. They cannot be charged with patron- 
 ising him, as if they thought they possessed deeper 
 penetration. They are only maintaining that their 
 specialty is different from his. They may see that he 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 79 
 
 has infinitely finer insight into more significant realities, 
 and is an immeasurably greater character. Indeed, on 
 this very account he may the better illustrate for them 
 the tendencies and the standards with which they are 
 acquainted and he is not. 
 
 When we come to look not for a mental sequence or a 
 moral principle operating in the minds of the New Testa- 
 ment characters, but for the real factors in their moral 
 and religious experience, the case is more complex. Here 
 I believe that they were not only influenced by, but were 
 actually conscious of, the very factors which the socio- 
 logical psychologist of our day accepts as data for his 
 theories. Yet they viewed these factors from a totally 
 different standpoint. They saw them in a different 
 light and in other connections ; they named them differ- 
 ently. Probably they were wholly unaware that the factors 
 could be viewed psychologically and sociologically. 
 
 Thus it well may be that Jesus Christ, in using the 
 term " our Father," was designating the idealistic cohesive 
 principle of all human society ; it may be that this reality 
 was not only influencing him but that he consciously felt 
 and understood it as the vital principle of the spiritual 
 organism of society ; yet it is quite possible that he could 
 not more exactly indicate it than by calling it his Father 
 in heaven. I say he may have felt it, it may have acted 
 upon him, he may have lived in it and by it and have 
 worshipped it and obeyed it, but he may have interpreted 
 it as a personal agent who, in his belief, had created the 
 universe. Still, all the time the factor which he was using 
 and fully appreciating may in reality, so far as psycho- 
 logical and sociological verification are concerned, have 
 been but a regulative, normative principle operating in 
 and among the souls of men. It may have been but the 
 moral law as an active energy among human minds. 
 
8o NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 This moral law may have no existence in reality apart 
 from the spiritual organism of human society. It may 
 be nothing but the general will of the community. 
 
 Jesus may not have been able to distinguish between 
 the elemental facts of his moral experience and the theory 
 and idea or point of view from which he perceived them. 
 On this account, any such interpretation as I am giving 
 to the realities to which he directed men's attention, 
 would possibly have astonished, if not bewildered him ; 
 it might have seemed false and dangerous to him. But, 
 let me repeat once more, a man of genius may be con- 
 sciously envisaging certain powers and realities in ex- 
 perience from the point of view of animism or personal 
 theism ; and yet he may none the less be aware of them 
 and dealing with them, they may be regulating him and 
 he may be inspired by them. 
 
 I have said that it is quite possible that Jesus never 
 attempted to analyse his complex and developed moral 
 experience, in order to detect how much in it was the 
 raw material of experience and how much due to the 
 current presuppositions and conceptions of his time, 
 under which all its elements were classified and by which 
 they were even built up and interpreted. But I ought to 
 hasten to say that I do not believe that it is possible for 
 any human being ever thoroughly to denude any experi- 
 ence of all hypotheses and expose to our understanding 
 the elementary sensations, so to speak, of the moral life. 
 Surely the modern psychologist and sociologist cannot do 
 this. He also must have pigeon-holes in which he sees 
 placed the elements of experience, and he cannot know 
 these except as thus classified. The only difference 
 between him and the earlier thinkers about righteousness 
 is that he is fully conscious that what he experiences is an 
 amalgam of theory and life, and that his theory is dis- 
 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 81 
 
 tinguished from the old one by being a constituent part 
 of that whole of modern organised common sense which 
 is called science. But this enables him to be aware that 
 the difference between his interpretation and that of 
 another is due not to difference of raw material but to 
 the fact that he uses a different set of pigeon-holes. 
 
 The sociologist may see a certain real factor in experi- 
 ence as " the general will of the community " ; but he 
 may at the same time believe that Jesus Christ, having 
 no such pigeon-hole for it, labelled it, very wisely and 
 effectively for his own purpose, " Our Father who art in 
 heaven." If, therefore, such an account be correct, we 
 cannot say that Jesus did not at all mean the moral law 
 as the unifying principle of human fellowship. He must 
 have meant it. Take the case of a sun-worshipper, who 
 believes that the sun is a great living, self-conscious spirit. 
 Very different is his interpretation of the sun from that 
 of modern physics, chemistry, and astronomy. But 
 nevertheless it is incontrovertible that he in his own way 
 is referring to the same factor in the life of our senses to 
 which the scientific man refers. Or take another illustra- 
 tion : a man may believe that he is tempted of the devil 
 of a personal agency outside of himself but the whole 
 basis for his belief is a certain experience of appetites and 
 passions and ambitions which, he knows only too well, 
 are operative in him. He does not view them as the 
 modern empirical psychologist would do ; he thinks and 
 speaks the thought and language of religious spiritism ; 
 yet he is talking of realities, and talking intelligently. Up 
 to a certain point he may deal with them as wisely as the 
 best-trained empirical psychologist. 
 
 I may cite as illustrative and corroborative of my point 
 of view the opening paragraph of Professor Gilbert 
 Murray's notes on his translation of the Hippolytus. 
 
 6 
 
82 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 He says : " The Aphrodite of Euripides' actual belief, if 
 one may venture to dogmatise on such a subject, was 
 almost certainly not what we should call a goddess, but 
 rather a Force in Nature, or a Spirit working in the 
 world. To deny her existence you would have to say 
 not merely c There is no such person/ but c There is no 
 such thing ' ; and such a denial would be a defiance of 
 obvious facts." In exactly the same way, I am main- 
 taining that the Being to whom the Lord's Prayer is 
 addressed is almost certainly not what we should call an 
 intelligent agent outside of the living organism of human 
 society, but rather a Force of Nature or a Spirit working 
 in the world that spirit being the general will of the 
 community. To deny the existence, therefore, of the 
 Being to whom the Lord's Prayer is addressed, you 
 would have to say not merely " There is no such person," 
 but " There is no such thing " ; and such a denial would 
 be a defiance of obvious facts. I maintain that the very 
 same raw material of moral experience which has been 
 pigeon-holed by supernaturalistic theologians as an infinite 
 Person, can now be classified from the sociological and 
 psychological point of view as a verifiable mental and 
 social Force in human life, and that when it is thus treated 
 it is rescued for the use of the scientific imagination of 
 man and for the lasting benefit of human society. 
 
 Yet I should add that, even were my interpretation of 
 the mental processes and the moral factors in the religious 
 experience of the New Testament characters wholly wrong, 
 the main purpose of my analysis and its ultimate validity 
 would not be overthrown. I have taken the Lord's 
 Prayer as an avenue through which to penetrate not 
 simply to what Jesus and the disciples thought and felt, 
 consciously or unconsciously, but to the realities of our 
 present-day living experience. It is true that I believe 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 83 
 
 such living experience as ours to-day to have been also 
 the basis of the words and thoughts and policy of Christ 
 and the Apostles. In this, however, I may be wrong ; 
 but no such error can overthrow the first-hand know- 
 ledge of our present-day life. One might even, without 
 impiety, say that if Christ and the Apostles did not 
 experience and perceive from their own peculiar point 
 of view the same factors, relationships and standards as 
 constitute the framework of our moral universe to-day, 
 so much the worse for the founders of Christianity. 
 But, on the other hand, if the method by which the 
 geologist reconstructs the past evolution of the surface of 
 the earth be logically j ustifiable, so also is the method by 
 which the psychologist and sociologist of modern moral 
 and religious experience can make sane and significant the 
 sayings and the lives of the men who in times past have 
 been the moral inspiration of the ages that followed them. 
 In turning to consider various points of identity and 
 difference between the ordinary interpretation of the 
 Power addressed in the Lord's Prayer and that which I 
 am expounding, it may be well to remember that the 
 New Testament wholly omits to say critically or scientifi- 
 cally what that Power is. The assumption is made that 
 readers will be able to identify it for themselves. It is 
 true that from the New Testament times until now the 
 Christian organisations which have survived in the rivalry 
 for existence have insisted that the Power referred to is 
 none other than an infinite personal being, not only 
 immanent in the universe of man and nature, but 
 transcendent. This consensus of opinion in Christian 
 history, however, cannot have the weight it would, had 
 not all other interpretations been crushed out by the 
 hounding down of heretics. It is quite possible that, had 
 other explanations been allowed a fair field and no favour, 
 
84 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 in the struggle for existence which would have ensued 
 among rival theories, some other than the one sanctioned 
 by the churches would have prevailed. Consequently the 
 consensus of ecclesiastical authorities must weigh as 
 nothing against a study of the meaning of the New 
 Testament writers and of our present-day experience, 
 according to the methods by which all other mental and 
 social phenomena are now being approached. The 
 prestige of the Church's dogma must count as nothing, 
 because antagonistic teachings were suppressed not by 
 disproof but by terrors and punishments. What is more, 
 the absence of a critical method in the New Testament 
 writers, and the omission of anything like a philosophic 
 theory of the experiences they were treating of, make it 
 impossible to say that a new interpretation of the factors of 
 moral experience is an attack upon anything that the New 
 Testament writers or Christ himself thought or said. I 
 shall in a future chapter set forth arguments which to me 
 are convincing that even the writers of the great Creeds 
 of Christianity, despite their transcendent metaphysics, 
 kept a firm intellectual and moral hold of verifiable factors 
 in real life, and were always referring to these, whatever 
 interpretation they may have given to them as manifesta- 
 tions of an infinite spirit, immanent and transcendent. 
 
 Let me also, before comparing the Power addressed in 
 the Lord's Prayer, as I interpret it, with the conventional 
 doctrine, ask the indulgence of my readers if I should 
 seem in some of the sentences of this chapter to identify 
 absolutely the Power that saves with the general will of 
 the community. I shall for brevity's sake permit myself 
 to fall into such a seeming limitation of that factor which 
 in my judgment has always been indicated by the word 
 God ; but I shall be in danger of no false inference from 
 so doing. Therefore I shall feel myself at liberty later 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 85 
 
 to point out that the good in man under natural law, 
 when it is unifying a nation's life, is not the whole of the 
 good in man and nature, but only its consummation and 
 highest manifestation. 
 
 1. If it should prove expedient hereafter, on other 
 grounds, for worshippers to address the Lord's Prayer to 
 the Unifying Will of the Community as the source of the 
 nation's moral salvation, there would be this great additional 
 advantage in so doing, that, then, our God would no longer 
 be exposed to philosophic scepticism, and thereby weakened 
 in his influence on man. There could never again be any 
 discussion as to whether he was knowable or not, for 
 nobody thinks of denying that this God is already known 
 in part and may continually become better known. I 
 call attention to this difference between a transcendent 
 source of salvation and a humanistic one without dwelling 
 upon the enormous amount of ingenuity and energy 
 that have been spent throughout the Christian era in 
 beating down the legitimate doubts of human reason as 
 to the existence and character of an infinite and trans- 
 cendent reality. Should the Being addressed in the Lord's 
 Prayer hereafter be humanistically interpreted, all the time 
 and energy which have been spent in suppressing freedom 
 of thought might thenceforth be devoted to the constructive 
 work of human redemption. So great would be this gain 
 that, even were one to find though I do not think we 
 should that there were some off-setting disadvantages, 
 still the change of interpretation would prove on the 
 whole an incalculable blessing. 
 
 2. To deify the Idealising Will of the Community as 
 the power that redeems is to set up not a new God, but a 
 part of the Christian God. It is the setting up of that 
 part of the Christian deity which by all believers in 
 orthodox Christianity is counted the part nearest and most 
 
86 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 beneficent to us mortals. All Christians teach that what- 
 ever in the spirits of men and in society is working 
 towards brotherly love is Christ, and is the infinite 
 creative spirit. How, then, can it ' be said by such 
 believers that the Idealising Will of the Community is a 
 new or strange deity ? For, by their own testimony, its 
 face is the face of Christ ; it is the infinite spirit incarnate. 
 Whether it be so or not the scientific judgment may 
 hesitate to say ; but the most that the Christian who 
 protests can justify as an objection to the new interpreta- 
 tion is that, while setting up a part of the power that 
 saves, it omits or overlooks or neglects another part. 
 On this point, it remains still to be discussed whether 
 that " something more " in the conventional interpretation 
 of God is not something more than it is wise and 
 expedient to deify. It remains to consider whether the 
 good in man is not a jealous God, and must not, by its 
 very nature, become supremely jealous, when human 
 worshippers look to a transcendent deity. 
 
 But, whether this be the case or not, there can be no 
 doubt that Christians, in proportion as they are concerned 
 with the actual coming of the kingdom of God on earth, 
 must be pre-eminently occupied with the latent good 
 in man and nature ; hence it is very easy for the 
 devout Christian to accept the new limitation to deity 
 which the scientific spirit requires. Already there are 
 religious societies in England which open their services 
 by chanting the Lord's Prayer, and yet the most of their 
 members consciously interpret the Power addressed as 
 being exclusively the Good, actual and potential, in man 
 under natural law. In the Hanley Labour Church, for 
 instance, the committee and the members a few years ago 
 discussed whether such a use of the Lord's Prayer com- 
 mitted them to belief in an infinite personal Creator ; and 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 87 
 
 it was decided that, while individual members might be at 
 liberty thus to interpret it, the Church as a whole was not so 
 committed, as many of the members, in saying or singing 
 " Thy kingdom come, thy will be done," were looking 
 only to the ideal of human perfection and to the human 
 and natural causes which make for its actualisation. 
 
 The ordinary form into which the Christian identifica- 
 tion of God with the Good in Man is cast is that God 
 acts only through human instrumentalities. But if this be 
 true, see what it means when applied. If no man is 
 befriending the poor, then God is not befriending them ; 
 for he works only through human instrumentalities. If 
 fathers or mothers or sisters are not shielding the youth 
 of our cities from the dangers of ignorance and appetite, 
 then God is not shielding them ; for he works only 
 through human instrumentalities. If men do not hear 
 the cry of toiling children, then God does not ; for 
 except through human ears and eyes and hands he does 
 not hear and see and touch. 
 
 But while many preachers affirm that God works only 
 thus, they do not apply the principle logically and 
 thoroughly. It is comparatively easy, however, when a 
 principle is once acknowledged, to bring about the 
 thorough application of it ; it is by no means so difficult 
 as would be the task of introducing a new principle. 
 Already vast numbers of Christians acknowledge that God 
 does not bring material help to human beings except 
 through human instrumentalities. They concede that he 
 does not carry coals or potatoes or shoes or coats to 
 those in want. Only one other step on their part is 
 needed in the same direction, and they will see, and be 
 glad to see, that he also never visits human souls who are 
 in need, except through the medium of other human souls. 
 They will perceive that it is just this higher work which 
 
88 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 a truly wise and beneficent God never would do except 
 through human agency. If he does not carry bread and 
 meat to the hungry, but rather than that lets them starve, 
 because he wants us to do it, surely he would never carry 
 them spiritual love and joy, for the same reason. 
 
 There can be no philosophic or scientific objection to 
 the statement that God works the works of love only 
 through human instrumentalities ; for this must in the 
 very nature of the case mean that the works emanate from 
 personal agencies within the living organism of society, 
 and that no love, no inspiration, no purifying influence 
 ever flows immediately into any human being's soul from 
 some personal agency beyond. God then becomes 
 identical with the good in men. If he never does any- 
 thing of himself that is, unmediated by a human agent 
 if he never puts any extra weights into the scale on the 
 side of justice and love, if he never sets anything right 
 over and above what men set right, if he never acts except 
 through men, it all comes to the same thing as if a 
 transcendent personal agency did not act at all ; and we 
 find ourselves back on the ground of humanistic religion 
 and humanistic theology that is, of religion and theology 
 minus supernaturalism. But here is a case where minus 
 turns out to be plus where the part is greater than the 
 whole. 
 
 3. Perhaps the highest moral ground on which trans- 
 cendent theism has defended itself is the claim it makes, 
 that it meets better than any other scheme of moral 
 salvation the craving of the heart for fellowship in the 
 inner life. It boasts that it alone can assure the un- 
 fortunate and the illiterate, the lonely and the outcast, of 
 an unseen friend, infinite in strength and mercy, all- 
 satisfying in beauty and charm of personality. And it 
 turns to those who do not make use of the idea of an 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 89 
 
 infinite loving Creator and yet hope to move men, and 
 asks in pitying condescension, " Pray, what have you to 
 offer the neglected and the bereaved ? Your ethical 
 religion without spiritual supernaturalism is all very well, 
 but it can never propagate itself among the people. It 
 can never inspire, redeem, console and heal. You have 
 cast yourselves off from the source of moral enthusiasm, 
 from communion with the Creator, the all-holy one. But 
 try your experiment," says transcendent theism ; " you will 
 do no permanent harm, and your ultimate failure will teach 
 men not to look your way a second time. And when you 
 fail, you yourselves will know whither to point men for 
 strength and peace. That fellowship which the world 
 does not offer, and yet which as a moral being every man 
 needs and craves, men will find again in communion with 
 an invisible, superhuman personal spirit, who knows each 
 of us in our inmost thought and desire, who accepts us as 
 we are, who forgives and heals and strengthens us in his 
 tender mercy." 
 
 The answer of humanistic religion, on this highest 
 ground that transcendent theism can assume in defence of 
 itself, is plain enough, and as unanswerable as it is clear. 
 In the first place, the humanist accepts the presupposition 
 of the transcendent theist, that an efficient scheme of moral 
 salvation must satisfy man's craving for spiritual fellow- 
 ship and must be able to use, as a motive to inspire men to 
 do the right, the desire for personal approbation when they 
 have done well, and, when they do ill, the fear of offending 
 and disappointing someone whom they care for supremely 
 and who, they know, cares for them. This longing for 
 personal fellowship in the spiritual life is, I believe, next 
 to the craving for holiness, the highest need of the human 
 heart. All men, in their sense of weakness and shame at the 
 thought of their own transgressions, in the consciousness 
 
90 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 of their responsibility to make life everywhere better and 
 sweeter, in hours of wider affection for humanity and the 
 whole sentient world ; when they are lifted out of self and 
 see a life of perfect justice and purity to be the only real 
 life ; indeed, at all times of deeper insight and purpose, 
 feel that personal sympathy and communion in devotion 
 to an ideal task is an inward necessity. It is not merely 
 a sentimental longing. Men might well do without it, if 
 it were only one more pleasure a serener peace, a deeper 
 joy to be attained ; the poor are accustomed to do 
 without. But it happens that fellowship in devotion to 
 the Ideal is the very source of sustained moral enthusiasm ; 
 it is men's moral nature longing to be fed and strengthened 
 that urges them into fellowship. The impulse to be holy, 
 conscious of its own weakness, whispers within them that 
 if only another were present to reinforce, the strength 
 would be adequate to the emergency. Indeed, those who 
 expect any isolated human being of his own unaided 
 power to become pure and grow into unselfish love, have 
 not learnt the first lesson of the art of regeneration. For 
 moral debility and disease enter into us by contagion, 
 by touch, by infection, by a poisonous social atmosphere. 
 There was undoubtedly the predisposition beforehand, but 
 a predisposition is not disease ; and it was the polluting 
 environment coming into direct action upon the predisposi- 
 tion that caused the corruption. Had no one else been a 
 liar, it had not been impossible for us to speak the truth. 
 Except for companionship with hypocrites, we should 
 have felt the courage of our opinions rise within us. It 
 is because others cheat in business transactions, that we 
 find it too hard to practise fair dealing ; it is the gambling 
 of others that fires our love of feverish risk. We speculate 
 wildly in commerce, because of the common wont of men 
 covetously to seek the wealth they have not earned. 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 91 
 
 It is likewise with our sins of omission. Who avoids 
 the public duties of citizenship and does not thereby 
 tempt every other man to shirk responsibility and give 
 over legislation and administration into the hands of 
 self-seekers ? Who is vain and makes display in dress 
 and equipage, who has contempt for honest work, who is 
 exclusive and proud of birth, and we do not all begin to 
 put a fictitious value upon such nothings ? What man is 
 unclean in talk and does not give a signal to the demon 
 within us to stir up fumes which steal away the moral 
 vision ? On the other hand, if anyone is merciful or just 
 or faithful or patient or ready to die for the world, we 
 likewise find it easy to be merciful and just and to offer our- 
 selves. It is by intimate communion with heroism that 
 we are first stirred to daring self-sacrifice. It is the faith 
 that someone somewhere is pure in mind, which turns 
 unworthy desire into self-disgust ; such a one demonstrates 
 to us the possibilities of virtue. But where, it is asked, 
 are we to find this fellowship ? 
 
 All the chances seem against our finding it. Even if the 
 human beings close about us are capable of redeeming, 
 how often is their virtue rendered inoperative by the 
 fact that, as George Eliot says, " Our daily familiar life 
 is but a hiding of ourselves from each other behind a 
 screen of trivial words and deeds. And those who sit 
 with us at the same hearth are often the farthest off from 
 the deep human soul within us, full of unspoken evil and 
 unacted good." But if the trivial words and deeds of 
 home life are a screen behind which men hide, what shall 
 we call the conventionalities of formal society, the set 
 phrases of religious teaching, ' the heartless rules of 
 business, the entrenched prejudices of race, class and sect ? 
 These are a stone wall of separation. How is the one 
 needing help to defy these, to meet the helper and coalesce 
 
92 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 with him in power ? Who even sees the Life hidden 
 behind the record of self-indulgence or selfish insolence ? 
 
 So may some stricken tree look blasted, bough and bole, 
 Champed by the fire-tooth, charred without, and yet, thrice- 
 bound 
 
 With dreriment about, within may life be found, 
 A prisoned power to branch and blossom as before, 
 Could but the gardener cleave the cloister, reach the core, 
 Loosen the vital sap : yet where shall help be found ? 
 Who says " How save it ? " nor " Why cumbers it the 
 
 ground ? " 
 
 .... That tree art thou ! All sloughed about with scurf, 
 Thy stag-horns fright the sky, thy snake-roots sting the turf ! 
 Drunkenness, wantonness, theft, murder gnash and gnarl 
 Thine outward, case thy soul with coating like the marie 
 Satan stamps flat upon each head beneath his hoof ! 
 And how deliver such ? The strong men keep aloof, 
 Lover and friend stand far, the mocking ones pass by, 
 Tophet gapes wide for prey : lost soul, despair and die ! 
 
 The transcendent theist will answer, " No finite human 
 power can save it. This side of the Almighty Gardener, 
 there is no one who can reach the core and loosen the 
 vital sap ; there is no other help to be found." But he 
 forgets that the whole of the humanward aspect of what 
 he calls an infinite creative spirit is identical, by his own 
 concession, with the good in man, with human agencies, 
 so far as these are ever tender, pure, self-abnegating 
 and strong. No testimony, therefore, of any person 
 saved under the discipline of a religion of transcendent 
 theism has the slightest weight as argument in disproof 
 of a religious humanism, unless it can be shown that 
 strength and consolation have come unmediated by human 
 agency. There is no occasion for one who, like my- 
 self, interprets moral experience from a humanistic point 
 of view, to deny in the least the efficacy of the real 
 factors in religious life under the transcendent theory. 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 93 
 
 The only possible protest from the naturalistic point of 
 view against transcendent theism is when it presumes to 
 reject human agency and to inculcate as morally good the 
 practice of direct, unmediated union with an infinite 
 personality. 
 
 But even in cases where testimony is offered as to the 
 efficacy of such a practice, the humanist need not deny 
 and will not deny the sweetness of the consolation and 
 peace that come to the devotee. People do get comfort 
 and ecstatic joy in the thought of a transcendent lover. 
 The emotional effects follow inevitably from imaginative 
 faith in the presence of such a lover. They would come 
 even though the divine presence were a mere figment of 
 fancy. If we imagine, although mistakenly, that we see 
 a friend coming towards us, we have the same pleasure 
 so long as the illusion lasts as if it were really he. But 
 what the naturalist in religion denies, and not only denies 
 but with alarm rejects, is the claim that the method of 
 inducing such effects by the thought of a transcendent 
 spirit is wise and good. He denies that the effects are 
 beneficial morally and spiritually to the individual. Still 
 stronger is his disbelief that any wise statesman who 
 wishes to develop the manliness and virility of the people 
 of his country can for a moment countenance the syste- 
 matic cultivation of spiritual fellowship with a personal 
 agent outside of the organism of humanity. 
 
 Nor is this moral protest on the part of the idealistic 
 humanist based on any happy optimism as to the possi- 
 bility of his inducing human beings to give the con- 
 solation and strength which transcendent theism professes 
 to be able with the greatest ease to supply. He is 
 fully aware that if we are to shut off communion with a 
 superhuman and supernatural agency and to limit ourselves 
 only to the fellowship of man, we make temporarily an 
 
94 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 awful blank in our lives. While declaring the transcendent 
 deity to be unverifiable, we find that the immanent deity 
 is in great part only a possibility is by no means a fully 
 realised fact. We discover that the immanent deity is 
 what can be and ought to be, rather than what is. With 
 a sense of terror it is revealed to us, that our immanent 
 God is potential rather than actual. Man is not standing 
 ready to receive us as the infinite Creator was said to 
 be. And when we are admitted to the fellowship of good 
 men, and of all men so far as they are good, it is to no 
 such banquet as that to which we believed ourselves to sit 
 down, when we imagined ourselves the welcomed guests 
 of a superhuman God. 
 
 This awful blank which the rejection of a transcendent 
 deity leaves behind is what old-fashioned believers call 
 the awful blank of Atheism. That it is awful there can 
 be no doubt ; it is a dreary waste and a desolation ; 
 men stepping into it are prone to shudder and draw 
 back. But in very truth it is the awful blank of In- 
 humanity ; it is the realising horror of the absence of 
 Man from our heart. No religious humanist, however, 
 would deny that it is also Atheism, that it is the absence 
 of God ; but only because the Good in Man is his God, 
 and therefore the absence of Man is the absence of his 
 God. This blank was never meant to be filled with the 
 light and life of a transcendent deity, but with the 
 warmth and love, the laughter and song, the rain and 
 the dew, the moon and the stars of human love. And 
 to doubt that human love might and ought to fill up the 
 loneliness we feel when we turn away from the super- 
 human lover and find ourselves barred out from human 
 fellowship, is moral infidelity. 
 
 Yes, the sense of being aliens in this world is the void 
 of Atheism ; and to escape it, one may fly to another 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 95 
 
 world and find one's spiritual communion there. But, 
 instead of flying from the void, one can and ought to fill 
 it ; and one ought to fill it with nothing else than 
 human love and fellowship. To fly to a transcendent 
 deity is to give up the good fight, to become reconciled 
 to evil, to desert one's post, to shirk the human task. 
 In short, the doctrine of a transcendent deity as a loving 
 friend is anti-social and anti-human. The superhuman, 
 when it usurps the place belonging by divine right to 
 the human, must be anti-human. Belief in superhuman 
 love has retarded for ages the coming in of universal 
 brotherhood, and is inimical to the interests of the poor 
 and the oppressed. If men have the peace and strength 
 that come of communion with a transcendent person, 
 they inevitably have so much the less need of fellowship 
 in the inner moral life with men ; their craving for 
 spiritual sympathy is gratified although they have opened 
 their heart to no man. Mankind is cheated of the purest 
 love in the human breast the desire for holy communion 
 whenever that desire is satisfied by spiritual intimacy 
 with any being outside of the human family. 
 
 I am aware that the transcendent theologian will say 
 that, if we love an infinite superhuman spirit whose will 
 is love, we cannot help loving our fellow-men ; for that 
 spirit loves them, and we offend and grieve him if we 
 neglect one of the least of his. According to this pro- 
 cess of reasoning, to love an infinite, invisible, incompre- 
 hensible person is the mainspring to the service of 
 mankind. We are asked, " If a man loveth not God whom 
 he hath not seen, how can he love his brother whom he 
 hath seen ? " But the New Testament writer of the 
 converse of this would, I am sure, have replied that such a 
 question was begotten not of moral experience and insight 
 but of dogmatic insolence ; and that the questioner should 
 
96 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 be rebuked and healed of wilful blindness, that he might 
 see for himself. 
 
 The transcendent theists represent their God as loving 
 the world directly, so that the sight of its suffering pains 
 him and the sight of its joy makes him glad. But instead of 
 summoning us to similar godlike love and readiness to 
 sacrifice, they enjoin upon us a direct love only towards One 
 who does not need us, and cannot suffer except by sympathy. 
 They do not summon us so to love the world that we 
 shall give our only begotten for it, but only to love another 
 who so loved the world that he was ready for its sake to 
 give his only begotten. In their minds, however, is 
 confusion worse confounded ; for unless deep down we 
 too love the world and love it directly, originally and 
 vitally, how does it come about that the Creator, when 
 conceived as loving it, so excites our awe ? How is it 
 that a human heart cannot hear of anyone's loving it, 
 without stealing out to him in joyful recognition of 
 spiritual kinship and even identity ? We know at a 
 flash and feel irresistibly, and therefore need no proof, 
 that all creatures that suffer are ours, and that if anyone 
 is merciful unto the least of them he is so unto us. The 
 humanist in religion does not deny the beauty of the 
 conception which the transcendent theist holds as to the 
 character of the Creator. On the contrary, he sees that 
 it is the perfect human character projected outwards. It 
 is a vision which the human soul throws up from its 
 own depths on to the clear blue sky of prophetic medita- 
 tion. But, knowing its immanent source, he resents 
 with his whole soul's protest the attempt to attribute to 
 it an outside source and reality, as if it belonged to 
 another world and could come to man only by revelation 
 from beyond himself. No sadder error has ever been 
 committed by human wit than to mistake the ideal of 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 97 
 
 divine love and self-sacrifice for a reality that comes to 
 man instead of one that is coming from man and is but 
 man not yet made. Our God is potent ; he is energy, he 
 is zest and joy ; he is the soul of man anticipating itself ; 
 he is our moral nature, now hidden in unconsciousness, 
 lifting itself like a new continent into the light of being. 
 
 In the first place, then, the defect of transcendent 
 theism is that in satisfying emotionally a man's need of 
 spiritual sympathy, it renders him independent of the 
 spiritual help of his fellow-men. It thus strikes a blow 
 at the highest sort of dependence of man upon man. 
 But its second and worse effect is that in relieving a man 
 of his need of others, it destroys his sense of his highest 
 responsibility towards others. If I do not need my 
 fellow-mortals in order to experience the peace and strength 
 of the highest spiritual communion, they in turn cannot 
 need me. Not needing me, they have no spiritual claim 
 upon me. Let them also look to the transcendent deity, 
 and leave me free and at peace from their clamourings 
 and their soul-hungers. It is a tremendous relief from 
 responsibility and annoyance, to feel that a superhuman 
 deity is infinitely solicitous, alert, and efficacious in attend- 
 ing to the soul-needs of the outcasts of society, the 
 abandoned, the vulgar who offend our taste. But herein 
 lies the greatest evil of supernaturalistic religion. The 
 Creator is doing, it says, the very thing or is willing to do 
 it if we let him which we ought to do ; he is stooping 
 with infinite tenderness and love over every erring soul. 
 Now, whether this be a fact or not we need not attempt 
 to argue ; but of this we may be sure, and this it is im- 
 portant to assert, that if a transcendent deity is doing the 
 very thing which we ought to do, it is incumbent upon us 
 to resent such action upon his part as an unpardonable 
 encroachment upon our spiritual domain. We must 
 
 7 
 
98 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 claim our moral right, and not permit him to usurp our 
 place. The Good in Man is a jealous God. 
 
 That the doctrine of a deity not conterminous with 
 the best in man has had a degrading influence by feeding 
 the human need for love from illicit sources, is the only 
 explanation for the apathy of devout supernaturalists 
 towards the social needs of our day, and for their com- 
 parative overlooking of natural and human means of 
 redemption. It is the duty of religious men to deny 
 themselves strenuously the gratification of communion 
 with a transcendent deity, in order to drive them to 
 solicit from others and to hasten to offer to others the 
 strength and inspiration of spiritual fellowship. But let 
 us not for a moment concede that in abandoning a trans- 
 cendent source of redemption they would be abandoning 
 the divine. Let us not for a moment set the human 
 over-against the divine. By such a use of thoughts and 
 phrases we should be playing into the hands of the super- 
 naturalists and confusing the common judgment. Let us 
 teach that the truly human is the only divine. Then 
 many a heart will be touched to come out of its solitary 
 worshipping-place, which would otherwise have felt no 
 demand upon it to seek its God in the hearts of men. 
 
 Against this analysis of transcendent theism and this 
 condemnation of its moral defects, the believer in it will 
 be ready to defend himself. He will declare that, as a 
 fact illustrated in the lives of men, belief in a transcendent 
 deity does not weaken men's sense of their own responsi- 
 bility ; he will point to the fact that those who love a 
 superhuman Creator most are the ones who love man 
 most. But here again is a case where no citing of past 
 religious experiences can constitute a convincing argument. 
 For until our own day men have been forbidden to 
 identify the best in man with the divine. The possible 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 99 
 
 absence, therefore, of instances of holy persons who have 
 not believed in a supernatural deity is perhaps itself a 
 great evidence of the inhumanity of transcendent theism. 
 Why are such persons nowhere to be cited ? Why is 
 there no trace of the humanist thy brother ? What hast 
 thou done ? If thou hast not slain him, perhaps thou 
 hast done worse, in not having permitted him to live out 
 his life. 
 
 If, in like manner, we are asked to cite proofs that a 
 humanistic religion would be adequate in meeting the 
 higher spiritual needs of men, we may in the same way 
 point to the failure of transcendent theism. Had it suc- 
 ceeded, the awful blank of human lovelessness would not 
 to-day exist. To annihilate this blank was its object. 
 We may therefore cite the inhumanity of man as evidence 
 of the fatal inhumanity of spiritistic religion. We would 
 point to the countless numbers of human beings who are 
 not born of love and who are kept alive only because they 
 cannot be got rid of without danger. These, instead of 
 constituting a plea for supernatural religion, condemn it 
 beyond reprieve. It cannot be permitted any longer to 
 boast of the thousands upon thousands of human beings 
 who, if they ever come to know the joy of being loved 
 and cherished, find it only in an ideal friendship with a 
 Spirit not of this world. It is undeniable that many a 
 human heart just on the brink of despair has been caught 
 back and saved by the thought that, although to no 
 human being, yet to an infinite Creator, it is precious. It 
 turns to him and finds solace and strength ; it owes him 
 everything. But who, to-day, can fail to detect the 
 unconscious mockery in the boast of the triumph of such 
 a scheme of salvation ? After its domination in the 
 imagination of men for ages, millions of human souls are 
 living in daily contact, and yet the only friend that many 
 
ioo NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 of them can boast is a superhuman and a supernatural 
 spirit 1 In the sight of this sad state of things and the 
 fear that it may last always, who can forbear from crying 
 out in protest ? Who dare discourage the hope that a 
 new religion, scientific, humanistic, democratic, ethical, 
 will, instead of preaching allegiance to a personal agent 
 beyond the organism of human society, preach the saving 
 power and the personal responsibility of each man for all 
 men, and all for each ? Who can doubt that this gospel 
 of the immanent deity will inspire thousands to go forth 
 and offer, in all humility, the best they have themselves 
 instead of pointing to another ? It is quite true that 
 in an ethical, humanistic religion all depends upon its 
 disciples, whether its gospel be mighty to save or not. 
 But religions which have not depended upon their dis- 
 ciples have failed ; they dare not raise a finger to prevent 
 the experiment of a naturalistic scheme of redemption at 
 least, so far as the craving for, and the responsibility of 
 offering, spiritual fellowship are concerned. 
 
 4. A fourth point, in which transcendent theism would 
 boast of its interpretation of the Power to whom the 
 Lord's Prayer is addressed, is that only according to its 
 scheme of moral redemption is God capable of being 
 represented as an ever-watchful eye. The Creator is 
 pictured as a special committee for moral vigilance. The 
 people are told and believe that there is one above who 
 knows everything that is going on. The wickedest 
 heart and the foulest den of iniquity are open to him ; 
 he is there watching ; he sees the concoctings of evil in 
 the solitary brain as well as in secret groups of men. All 
 the fiendish traps that are every day set and successfully 
 sprung upon the unsuspecting, the weak, and the ignorant 
 plots which society now in general learns of only when 
 it is too late he is aware of from the beginning. Not 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 101 
 
 only this, but he keeps strict record of all offences done, 
 and in his own good time will appear as witness for or 
 against every man of us, every city and every nation. 
 
 This idea has had a mighty influence, at least in 
 securing outward conformity to goodness, in the restraint 
 of overt acts of evil. It has kept men up to the line of 
 duty. Nor, as it seems to me, can it be wholly con- 
 demned because it appeals to a motive relatively lower 
 than direct love of doing right and of disinterested 
 beneficence. The fear of being caught is undoubtedly 
 a relatively low motive ; indeed, in the best of men it 
 might not act as a motive at all. But a scheme of 
 salvation is to be tested pre-eminently by its efficiency 
 in acting upon men who have not yet reached the highest 
 state of moral evolution, and who therefore find that 
 the highest motives are in them the weakest. It may 
 safely be maintained that if no other means in the place 
 of appeals to man's natural dread of being caught at his 
 evil-doing could be established, the great mass of man- 
 kind would sink back into animalism or fly into reckless 
 anarchy. The humanist in religion, then, must meet 
 on its own premiss this argument as to the practical 
 efficiency of appealing to the fear of being caught. And 
 this he is able to do. He can undoubtedly show himself 
 able to appeal to the fear of consequences more power- 
 fully than through the notion that a supernatural spirit 
 is witnessing and noting men's conduct. Indeed, this 
 idea has always suffered from an inherent and fatal 
 weakness, which becomes more and more apparent the 
 more intelligent the people grow. It depends wholly for 
 its potency upon absolute and unthinking faith in the 
 existence of such an ever- watchful and superhuman 
 detective. But unhappily' for it and happily for man, 
 there is no proof in human experience for the existence 
 
102 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 of such a being. The supernatural watchman, all will 
 agree, gives no sign of his presence, or such faint ones 
 that only experts in transcendent theism can detect them. 
 The perpetrators of evil, although alert to the slightest 
 approach of danger, never see his shadow cross their path 
 or hear his step. They never even think they see or 
 hear him, except the thought has been suggested to them 
 by the priests of supernaturalism. The superhuman 
 agent's way of hiding himself almost defeats the chief 
 object of humane moral vigilance, which is to anticipate 
 and prevent wrong-doing by making men certain that 
 they are being observed and will be judged. When no 
 one but such a watchman is about, it is, to the man who 
 does not believe in him, strikingly like being alone ; and 
 when people discover that there is no real evidence of 
 any intelligent witness in the universe except man, that 
 idea will lose entirely its practical power. How different, 
 on the other hand, is a scheme of salvation which not 
 only frankly but gladly accepts the fact that, where no 
 man is watching, neither is God watching ; but that 
 where man is watching over his own, there God is 
 watching over his own ! 
 
 The whole policy of trusting to a superhuman vigilance 
 is further vitiated by the fact that, according to universal 
 experience, the supernatural watchman, however much he 
 may see, never reports on anyone to anyone else. You 
 may be quite sure that, if no one but the Creator saw you 
 do an evil deed, no one will ever find it out, unless you 
 betray yourself or somebody traces the act to you by a 
 natural clue. And this peculiar circumstance renders 
 the situation identical with what it would be, if there 
 were no supernatural detective at all, because even 
 without him others would find you out equally well, if 
 you betrayed yourself or if any other natural way led to 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 
 
 103 
 
 detection. Human society accordingly reaps no benefits 
 from the Creator's record of crime ; for, however much 
 he may know and record, he keeps his book of life 
 locked so safely away that it is inaccessible, and he delays 
 his coming forward with the evidence until the end of 
 the world. In the meanwhile, through the countless 
 ages that to us mortals are like an eternity of time, 
 mischief is doing its sure, quick work ; envy and hatred, 
 pride and malice, passion, greed and wantonness are 
 bringing forth the direfullest shapes of human misery. 
 
 No one who realises the human situation so far as 
 this idea of a supernatural detective is concerned, can 
 regret that the notion is losing its hold upon the modern 
 mind ; for that notion has lulled the social conscience 
 into a sleep of false security. Who can doubt that the 
 idea that the Creator without man's agency is ferreting 
 out crime and will some day bring offenders to justice, 
 has dulled good men to the full sense of the necessity of 
 their doing it ? Who can doubt that this is one great 
 reason why, in every city throughout Christendom, vice 
 has been allowed to become systematised and capitalised, 
 and vast numbers of human beings to be made victims of 
 shameless and glaring greed and lust ? Further, who 
 can doubt that, with the throwing off of trust in an 
 intelligent agency outside of man, there will come a 
 utilisation of hitherto neglected power in human beings 
 to put an end to evil-doing and to the misery it 
 engenders ? Religious insight will then become identical 
 with practical common sense ; and it will be seen that 
 even one capable man devoting himself to the task, 
 arming himself with a knowledge of the law and organis- 
 ing others, can bring about the washing and cleansing of 
 a whole city or nation, and leave it clothed and in its 
 right mind. 
 
io 4 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Supernatural religion must prove to the scientific 
 imagination that it has not dissipated the moral forces of 
 society by turning them into useless channels ; for all 
 logic and common sense indicate that it has. 
 
 A humanistic religion offers, in the place of super- 
 natural vigilance, an adequate increase of men's vigilance ; 
 in the place of a presence unseen, unheard and intangible, 
 but merely believed in, a presence actually seen and felt 
 and touched, and seeing, feeling and touching ; living 
 men and women, singly and banded together, looking, 
 noting, warning, condemning, preventing, rescuing and 
 inspiring. The dread of being caught by one's fellow- 
 men, when well founded in everyday experience, is the 
 strongest check that can be found to the evil impulses of 
 evil men. The possibility of incurring the contempt 
 even of strangers holds us back from our sweetest trans- 
 gressions ; and the thought of the merest chance of being 
 found out by those who respect us and tenderly love us 
 cuts into the soul like a knife ; it spreads sharp pain 
 through the finest pleasure, so that we recoil from our 
 fondest schemes. It is a profound pity that more use is 
 not made of this impulse to appear noble and pure to the 
 fellow-mortals who believe us to be so. It is a moral 
 calamity that the chances of not being caught are so very 
 great. " I die content," were the triumphant last words 
 of a criminal, "for I assumed a false name, and my 
 family will never hear of my disgrace." At present, 
 every man's neighbours leave whole tracts of his character 
 and conduct unexplored, although within easy reach of 
 their inspection ; and the alert and cunning evil in him 
 takes advantage of the fact. On principle, the majority 
 of honest men and women allow free sweep to vice and 
 crime and rank injustice, if only it does not despoil their 
 own household. So far as their own personal interference 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 105 
 
 goes, citizens in general give over the community at large 
 to iniquity. Note the bold insolence with which the 
 capitalists of crime openly defy the laws, and the mocking 
 manner in which the abettors of drunkenness and lust 
 and legal extortion flaunt in our face the boast that no one 
 dares molest their traffic. Yet all that is needed tg put 
 an end to such alarming features of modern life is that 
 the good in men and women should cease to be passive. 
 Then not a street, not a shop, not a house, not a room, 
 would remain unvisited by the providence of man. Then 
 instead of the laughter of defiant vice and the wail of 
 violated innocence, in place of the sighing of women and 
 children and the threats of vengeance for injustice done, 
 would rise on every side an anthem at once of joyful 
 human trust and of thanksgiving to the God of our 
 salvation. That such a scheme of deliverance from misery 
 and sin entails upon men a duty and a responsibility which 
 the missionaries of supernaturalism were not required to 
 feel can, from an ethical point of view, be counted as no 
 defect in it. Indeed, it is inevitable that, for every 
 doctrine which we must give up because it inculcated 
 trust in moral agencies beyond man, men must themselves 
 assume a new and corresponding responsibility. When 
 the Power that saves becomes immanent and identical 
 with man, it does not cease to perform the offices of 
 God ; nay, on the contrary, now more than ever 
 
 " Look unto me and be ye saved ! " saith God : 
 " I strike the rock, outstreats the life-stream at my rod ! 
 Be your sins scarlet, wool shall they seem like although 
 As crimson red, yet turn white as the driven snow ! " 
 
 Those who identify the Being to whom the Lord's 
 Prayer is addressed with the Good in Man stand to the 
 champions of a transcendent deity as did Elijah to the 
 
106 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 prophets of Baal. They say to these, " Call ye on the 
 name of your God, and we will call on the name of 
 the Lord ; and the God that answereth by fire, let him 
 be God." What is the whole contention between old- 
 fashioned creeds of religion and modern science but 
 this ? The believers in an intelligent agency beyond the 
 living organism of human society are saying, " O Baal, hear 
 us ! " but there has been no voice, nor any that answered. 
 And now it is towards the noonday of science and of 
 social democracy, of belief in the goodness and power of 
 man ; and Elijah is beginning to mock the priests of a 
 supernatural deity. He is saying, " Cry aloud : for he 
 is a god ; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he 
 is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be 
 awaked." Yet the Elijah of to-day knows that the 
 only true God is always in a journey when men are in a 
 journey, and always sleepeth when men are asleep, and 
 must be awaked. Knowing this, Elijah is beginning 
 to stop men's talking and call them back from their 
 pursuing and shake them out of their sleep ; and he is 
 challenging the priests of Baal : " The God that answereth 
 by fire by the fire that leaps from human hearts the 
 Lord who worketh not except through human instru- 
 mentalities, he is the God." For if the God of super- 
 naturalism, as I have said before, never does anything of 
 himself if he never puts any extra weights into the scale 
 on the side of justice and love, if he never rights anything 
 over and above what men do, if he never acts except 
 through men it all comes to the same thing as if he did 
 not act at all ; and we find ourselves back on the solid 
 rock of a faith wholly humanistic and naturalistic. 
 
 5. When we analyse experience more deeply than was 
 done by those who brought into vogue the traditional 
 commonplaces of religious doctrine and exhortation, there 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 107 
 
 is something almost humorous in the way the arguments 
 ordinarily brought forward to support conventional opinion 
 suddenly transform themselves into arguments against it. 
 The solemn manner in which it has been urged as a point 
 in favour of a transcendent deity, that he is able to do for 
 us infinitely more than could any spiritual will of the 
 community under cosmic law, becomes ludicrous when 
 we suddenly discover that, from the point of view of a 
 nation's welfare, those things which only a deity above man 
 and nature could grant us, are the very things which no 
 wise statesman, no disinterested and humane patriot, 
 would tolerate that his people should pray for. The 
 things beyond the power of granting by the spiritual 
 organism of society through natural means are interests 
 antagonistic to the social well-being of a nation. From 
 them the people's attention must be diverted by educators 
 and nation-builders, in the interests of posterity and of the 
 establishment of the kingdom of heaven upon earth. If, 
 without bias against the idea of a transcendent deity but 
 wholly in the service of his people, a statesman were to 
 indicate those concerns which are most liable to weaken 
 and waste the best energy of the nation, we should find 
 them to be, in the main, the interests which the upholders 
 of transcendent theism have been systematically turning 
 the attention of the people towards for some thousands of 
 years a life after death, and the nature and purposes of 
 an agent whose ways are not our ways, but, whatever they 
 may be, are past finding out. The immanent God who 
 is the life-giving principle that builds up families, nations 
 and societies, and advances science, art and the virtues, is 
 verily a jealous God. And now that men are waking up 
 to a knowledge of his real nature, they will inevitably in 
 his name condemn, as false religion, all spiritual solicitude 
 about a life after death for oneself or others, or about 
 
io8 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 the secret nature of the supposed reality beyond verifica- 
 tion. Just as in ancient times the social conscience rose 
 up and beat down the offering of thousands of rams and 
 tens of thousands of rivers of oil, so in the name of the 
 God of Nations it will now tolerate no preoccupation 
 with a life after death or a spirit beyond experience. 
 
 From the point of view of national idealism, the argu- 
 ment in favour of a transcendent deity, that he is at the 
 same time immanent, cannot be allowed to pass muster. 
 It is the immanent God that is jealous of the God trans- 
 cendent. Not that in and of itself the transcendent may 
 not exist : for the God of Nations, like the God of ancient 
 Israel, in forbidding the worship of anything beyond him- 
 self, does so not on the ground that other beings which 
 have been set up are non-existent, but rather on the 
 ground that, whether they be existent or not, it is from 
 the social point of view illicit to worship them, and that, 
 if they actually exist, the worship of them is still more re- 
 prehensible. To worship a nothing cannot be so antagon- 
 istic to social welfare as to worship a foreign something 
 which may get a positive grip of the soul and communicate 
 to it extra-social satisfactions. Such being the case, it is 
 not enough for the metaphysician to show that the trans- 
 cendent exists. The ordered cosmos is the only legitimate 
 power and medium of communication among human souls. 
 Nor, in the hearts of those whose religion consists of 
 national idealism, will it add to the weight of the argument 
 in favour of the transcendent but, on the contrary, de- 
 tract from it that this transcendent part of that which in 
 its immanent phase is the cohesive principle of society, is 
 of the nature of love and pity, and dwells in a City and 
 inspires a Nation of the Blest, in comparison with which 
 England and all the tribes of the earth are as nothing. 
 The spirit that has made England and is unifying all the 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 109 
 
 nations of the world will tolerate no hint of disparagement 
 as to the infinite worth of devotion to the great causes 
 of human perfection on earth. Nor will it tolerate any 
 hope or any attempt at self-realisation on the part of 
 individual men and women, except through service to the 
 mundane Heaven. 
 
 My contention has here been that it is wrong for men 
 to ask for anything which the immanent deity cannot give 
 them. But one must meet the implication often made 
 against such a restriction, that it is only a transcendent 
 deity who can lavish the highest and the perfect gifts ; 
 that beggarly indeed will be man's life if he shuts himself 
 off from the transcendent. The implication is made that, 
 when you have excluded the transcendent, there is almost 
 no power left, and that nine-tenths of the glory of life is 
 eclipsed. The only way to check such a blunder is to 
 open the eyes of the blind, that they may see the potenti- 
 alities sleeping at the heart of man and the universe, and 
 therefore in the bosom of God immanent. To the secular 
 imagination, the resources of the universe which are 
 opened up to the will of man, when it is scientifically 
 trained, are infinite and majestic both in their outward 
 manifestation and in the resources which they bring to the 
 relief and the perfecting of man's estate. Indeed, it was 
 the might of the universe and the majesty of man which 
 induced the belief in an infinite Creator ; yet so jealous 
 have become the worshippers of a transcendent source of 
 the universe, that, in order to show him honour and glory, 
 they scorn the very ground from which sprang their 
 anthems to the transcendent. 
 
 If anyone, however, in order to disparage the worship of 
 the indwelling principle of social life, should attempt to 
 show how very weak it has always been, and how rampant 
 have been the anti-social forces in man and nature, he 
 
no NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 would be guilty of a vicious form of reasoning, due to 
 his habit of transcendent theologising. He cannot 
 imagine that one would be willing to concede any limita- 
 tions to the power, and the manifestation of the power, of 
 one's own God. But the humanist can quite consistently 
 concede that the power he worships has in the actual life 
 of men been very weak scarcely more than a babe in a 
 manger. He also is perfectly ready to concede indeed, 
 anxious to insist that this redeeming deity is wholly 
 dependent upon individual men and women devoted to 
 the cause of the good in the world. Without them his 
 deity is nothing. But he will hasten to show that, as the 
 number of the socially self-sacrificing grows and their insight 
 deepens, the immanent deity increases in the manifestation 
 of strength. He will also hasten to demonstrate that 
 there are no assignable limits to the might, majesty, 
 dominion and power which the good in the world may 
 ultimately attain ; for the whole universe of forces and 
 energies is lying at our feet, ready to do our bidding the 
 moment our intelligence shall understand its nature. 
 
 6. Another illustration of the way in which old- 
 fashioned arguments, long used to defend the belief in 
 a transcendent deity, now suddenly right-about-face, is 
 seen in the controversy in reference to anthropomorphic 
 tendencies in religion. One of the strongest reasons 
 against Christian theism brought forward by philosophical 
 critics has always been that the Christian God was 
 anthropomorphic. For a God to be anthropomorphic, it 
 was argued, was enough to prove him unworthy to be a 
 God ; and Christian apologists of the broad-minded and 
 philosophical type have for centuries tried to explain away 
 the seeming anthropomorphism of the language of the 
 Bible, and interpret it into some sort of compatibility 
 with what reason inevitably required of an infinite, trans- 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER in 
 
 cendent, superhuman and supernatural deity. More and 
 more of late, Christian theists have been won over to a 
 metaphysic which strips their deity of all lovable and 
 indeed of all definable or even thinkable attributes. 
 Many have frankly professed themselves agnostic in the 
 Spencerian sense. They have not been ashamed to 
 worship an unknowable being. Others have adopted 
 the language of the transcendental idealists, and interpret 
 the Christian God to be outside of time and space, above 
 the categories of human understanding, and beyond all 
 such distinctions as those of good and bad, right and 
 wrong which are said to be mere forms for the valuations 
 of finite consciousness. 
 
 Now it must be conceded that a transcendent deity, in 
 so far as he is transcendent, must be incomprehensible ; 
 and that no qualitative or quantitative statement can be 
 made about him without involving in hopeless self- 
 contradiction the intellect which affirms it. But when we 
 turn to consider the attributes and limits of an immanent 
 deity, anthropomorphism ceases altogether to be a blunder 
 either of intellect or of heart. It is no longer an attempt 
 to clothe the unspeakable in language, the unthinkable in 
 thought, and the infinite in terms of the finite. When 
 one's God is the cause of the good in man under cosmic 
 law, there need be only one limitation to a complete and 
 absolute anthropomorphism, and that limitation is an 
 ethical necessity set by the identification of the Being one 
 worships with Goodness and the Tendency to Goodness. 
 Only one characteristic of man is shut out from the nature 
 of the immanent God, and that is man's badness ; and 
 only those forces of the outward universe are outside of 
 God which are inevitably against righteousness in their 
 effects. Man and nature, so far as they are good or 
 make for the good, constitute a reality not only man in 
 
ii2 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 form but man in substance. The weakness and finiteness 
 of the immanent God is, even from the logical point of 
 view, no occasion for distress or confusion to his 
 worshippers. Those who incline to identify the good in 
 man with God are no such worshippers of power as to be 
 agonised simply on the score that their deity is not infinite 
 and that he could not by a mere fiat of his will puff out 
 the universe and man. They are not so much in love 
 with power that they would be willing to sacrifice the 
 goodness of their God in order to parade him as infinite. 
 They are under no logical constraint to prove that evil is 
 only tolerated passively by their deity ; for he does not 
 tolerate it at all. They are quite ready to concede that, if 
 their God but could, he would put an instantaneous end 
 to the bad in the human heart, and all those trends of 
 circumstance which work to the disadvantage of man. 
 They are not ashamed to admit that, if only their God 
 were able, he would hasten the process of the upward 
 evolution of human society, and would do more in a year 
 than he has been able to accomplish in a hundred thousand 
 years. Indeed, the weakness of their God intensifies 
 their loyalty to his service. They have no desire to 
 desert him because he is not as mighty as he is good. 
 
 One of the great services to the devout and searching 
 thought of our age which the doctrine of an immanent 
 deity can render, is that it at last resolves the supposed 
 antagonism between divinity and humanity. It ends the 
 feeling that in the Being one worships one must sacrifice 
 human attributes in order that he shall seem divine, and 
 that one must strip man of divine attributes lest he should 
 seem impiously to arrogate to himself the functions of 
 divinity. 
 
 An interesting side result of identifying the good in 
 man with the Power to whom the Lord's Prayer is 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 113 
 
 addressed, is the rescue of the so-called anthropo- 
 morphism of the New Testament from the danger of 
 being thrown by modern statesmen to the scrap-heap. If 
 I am right in thinking that the reality to which Christ in 
 the Lord's Prayer pointed his disciples was social justice 
 as the unifying principle which organises men socially, 
 nearly everything which has recently become discredited 
 in his sayings, on the ground that it was anthropo- 
 morphic, now not only rises above fantasy and fiction, 
 but transcends the realm of poetry and becomes a 
 scientifically accurate delineation of the Unifying Will 
 of the Community. 
 
 The immediate context of the Lord's Prayer in Luke 
 has been a source almost of humiliation to the trans- 
 cendent theist, on account of its seemingly unrestrained 
 and rank anthropomorphism. But the moment one 
 interprets humanistically the power addressed in the 
 Lord's Prayer, the language becomes one more proof of 
 the profound psychic and social insight of Jesus or at 
 least of the writer of Luke. For the very characteristics 
 which Jesus is said to ascribe to the power to whom he 
 urges his disciples to pray while wholly inapplicable to 
 the Infinite (for we all know what that is not) fit, as a 
 mask does the face it was moulded on, the well-known 
 features of the organised will of a community. Having 
 taught his disciples to pray, Christ " said unto them, 
 Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him 
 at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three 
 loaves ; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to 
 me, and I have nothing to set before him ? And he 
 from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not : the 
 door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed ; I 
 cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, Though he 
 will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet 
 
n 4 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 because of his importunity he will rise and give him as 
 many as he needeth." 
 
 Now, of the General Will of the Community, more or 
 less consciously organised and centralised in the government 
 of a city or state, it is true that it will often help us, not 
 because it is our friend or because we are deserving and 
 have a claim, but on condition that we tease it and 
 obtrusively demonstrate to it that we do not mean to 
 stop importuning until our request is granted. But if 
 Jesus meant that the transcendent Creator because of our 
 importunity heeds our requests, he must either have been 
 inexperienced or had a totally different experience from 
 mortals to-day. It simply is not a fact that anything 
 comes to us without a natural cause ; and, as to natural 
 causes, when no living human agent is working through 
 them, the quality in them which strikes everyone who 
 does not avert his eyes is (as John Stuart Mill said) "their 
 perfect and absolute recklessness. They go straight to 
 their end without regarding what or whom they crush on 
 the road." Not even importunity influences them ! This 
 quality Emerson indicated in saying, " Diseases, the 
 elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons ; 
 . . . everything is dealt to us without fear or favour 
 after severe universal laws." More poetically did 
 Matthew Arnold warn us concerning the inconsiderate- 
 ness of sub-human nature : 
 
 Streams will not curb their pride 
 
 The just man not to entomb, 
 Nor lightnings go aside 
 
 To leave his virtues room ; 
 Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man's barge. 
 
 Likewise the great and tender lover of nature, Richard 
 Jefferies, after picturing the life of the poor in winter, 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 115 
 
 cries out, "No kindness to man, from birth-hour to 
 ending ; neither earth, sky, nor gods care for him 
 innocent at the mother's breast. Nothing good to man 
 but man ! Let man then leave his gods and lift his ideal 
 above them." Could the metaphysical thinking of Jesus 
 have been so superficial that he did not feel a moral 
 contradiction between the attributes of an infinite person 
 who could have created sub-human nature ruthless, and 
 of a finite person who, although he will not rise and give 
 because his disposition is friendly, will respond to im- 
 portunity ? But man is undoubtedly moved by impor- 
 tunity ; nor is this to his moral discredit. For it is of 
 the nature of finite intelligence that its power of attention 
 is limited ; if it turns to one point, it must draw off its 
 power of appreciation from others. Not to respond until 
 importuned, therefore, is no proof of obliquity or 
 imbecility in a finite mind ; and any resentment at not 
 receiving immediate attention is idle, and argues inexperi- 
 ence or a failure to understand the organic economy of 
 finite mental activities. 
 
 Now, what is true of the individual mind is true of the 
 general mind, and for the same reason. In the nature of 
 things, it is at times preoccupied, and must lapse at 
 others into a state of repose. Therefore, if Christ 
 identified God with the social conscience, his reasoning 
 was irrefutable ; and those who on other grounds believe 
 in his moral sanity will find in the new interpretation 
 which we are able to give to the context of the Lord's 
 Prayer an added reason for their faith in him. 
 
 7. In the preceding section I have incidentally touched 
 upon the limitation which the worshipper of the good in 
 the world sets to his deity in excluding everything bad. 
 But I did not imply that in experience the good is actually 
 separated from the bad. The transcendent theist thinks 
 
n6 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 he is able to offer a strong argument in favour of his 
 deity, in that it is infinitely separated from sin and evil 
 and from the blindness and folly of human incapacity ; 
 and he imagines himself able to find a cogent objection 
 to the worship of a wholly immanent deity in this fact, 
 that the good in man is inextricably intermixed with 
 moral evil. There is no denying that human goodness 
 seems even vitally bound up in the same self-conscious- 
 nesses with badness, insomuch that an individual agent 
 may never be certain of the perfect purity of his own 
 highest motives. In the same human breast where the 
 yearning for social service exists even to the degree of 
 willingness to die for the world, there may lurk, ready 
 to spring forth at any chance of gratifying themselves, 
 anti-social appetites and selfish ambitions. How, it may 
 be asked, can one worship as a God goodness which is 
 vitally connected with evil ? 
 
 In reply it must be noted that, however much champions 
 of a transcendent deity may boast that an infinite Creator is 
 not vitally and inextricably intermixed with moral badness, 
 they cannot free him from responsibility for it ; and it 
 were, therefore, a better credential for him if he were 
 vitally intermixed with it. That he, having created the 
 world good, should have allowed it (although only as an 
 inevitable condition to virtue) to turn bad and by free 
 will to continue evil, is acknowledged to be a moral 
 riddle by the most devout believers in him ; and the 
 wisest of them discreetly confess that the problem baffles 
 them ; they do not pretend to explain how it is morally 
 possible for an infinitely good and omnipotent Creator to 
 tolerate moral evil in finite minds. They can preserve 
 their faith intact only by having recourse to the thought 
 that purposes are served which transcend all human com- 
 prehension. But, as he permits evil to continue, the one 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 117 
 
 thing that would seem incumbent upon the transcendent 
 Creator would be, to penetrate so closely and vitally into 
 contact with it that he would be as near to it as the Good 
 in Man undeniably is. For one great hope of ultimately 
 annihilating sin and checking its consequences is the vital 
 connection of good with evil. It is no misfortune if the 
 God we pray to is so close to the bad that the bad must 
 always overhear our prayer and feel through itself the 
 responsive outrush of God. It will be prayer to a God 
 immanent in consciousnesses not wholly good, which will 
 convert the powers now directed to evil, to the service of 
 the Good. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE LORD'S PRAYER : THE PETITIONS AND 
 THE PETITIONERS 
 
 HAVING examined the points of likeness and difference 
 between my own and the old conception of the power 
 addressed in the Lord's Prayer, I may be permitted to 
 assume that my reader is willing, at least for argument's 
 sake, to grant the expediency of turning the reverent 
 attention of the people systematically to all the good in 
 the world as the source of redemption. I may further 
 assume his assent to the necessity of direct addresses to 
 this power, expressive of praise and gratitude, and of 
 petitions for blessings. Furthermore, if we were now to 
 find upon analysis that the petitions contained in the 
 Lord's Prayer, and the characteristics implied in it as 
 inherent in the suppliants, were the very ones which, if 
 it were used as the national supplication, would best train 
 the minds of the people to social service, we should be 
 constrained to retain for it its ancient pre-eminence in the 
 Prayer Book. Let us, then, consider every detail of it 
 which can have any bearing upon the question before us. 
 
 i. Are the first two words of the Lord's Prayer the 
 most suitable as an appellation for a deity identical with 
 human goodness ? 
 
 Like the word God itself, the word Father points to 
 
 118 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 119 
 
 no quality inherent in the being designated ; it is a 
 relational term ; that is, it refers only to some connection 
 between the power indicated and human beings. A 
 father is primarily one by whom a human being's body 
 is begotten, and secondarily and commonly one by whom 
 both body and mind are, at least in part, supplied with the 
 means of development. One might reason, then, that 
 legitimately a figurative use of the word would be its 
 application to any thing or idea which was an active factor 
 in bringing into existence and sustaining, in another being, 
 any quality or aspect. But this is not all. Dependence 
 upon its father for its nature and nurture arouses in the 
 consciousness of a child, either spontaneously or upon 
 inculcation, a sense of indebtedness, gratitude and 
 reverence, and an active opening of its heart to the 
 father and a direct asking for advice and help. Accord- 
 ingly, a full figurative use of the word Father would 
 appropriately apply it to any being towards which we look 
 in gratitude, reverence and hope, because we have derived 
 from it our nature and nurture. Undoubtedly the 
 Greeks called Zeus " Father " because their conscious 
 attitude towards him was like the attitude of a child to 
 its parent, and the grounds for their attitude were similar 
 to a child's. Was not this the whole reason, also, why 
 the Christians called their God " Father " ? If, however, 
 it now turns out that the Christian God is all the good 
 in man and nature, analogy renders the epithet more 
 appropriate than ever before. For each individual human 
 being, all the stored-up good in the world is the begetter 
 both of his body and soul. The body is due to the sum- 
 total of all the lifeward influences in the universe, and 
 not simply to the one human being specified as Father. 
 As to his physical nurture, also, how could the child even 
 live, if all other means in the universe were withdrawn 
 
120 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 except those provided by the parent ? And will a man 
 who has grown conscious of his dependence upon all 
 beneficent influences, and who is moved to gratitude 
 towards all immanent good, limit the denotation of the 
 term father to one human being ? The more one 
 synthesises the elements of the case, the more one begins 
 to feel that to call all the good in the world " Father " is 
 not so much the transference of a term by poetic analogy 
 as the literal and scientific extension of it ; and in the 
 fact that faith in the immanent good is immune from the 
 weakening effects of philosophic scepticism and is justified 
 by experience, we have one more ground for calling the 
 good in the world our Father. Indeed, had Greek and 
 Jew and Christian never designated their deities in this 
 manner, we should none the less be constrained now to 
 appropriate the term. Although the statesmen of the 
 next generation may sweep the Bible from our schools 
 and turn against the customs of the Church, they will be 
 compelled by the interests of the State and by inner truth 
 to teach not only the young but adults to revere human 
 goodness and all that tends towards it, as a child reveres a 
 father, and therefore to call it " Father." 
 
 2. Those who accept the Lord's Prayer in the ordinary 
 way, as if its full meaning were patent to the casual 
 listener the first time he hears it, may think that in the 
 clause which immediately follows the words " our Father " 
 is to be found an utter refutation of the proposition that 
 the prayer was really addressed to a divinity identical with 
 the good in man on earth. For does not the prayer itself, 
 at the very outset, distinctly say that it is addressed to a 
 being that is in heaven ? And is not heaven a term 
 that clearly points away from anything on earth ? Indeed, 
 in the third petition of the prayer, " Thy will be done on 
 earth as it is in heaven," heaven is set over-against earth 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 121 
 
 in a way that proves, it is said, that it must mean another 
 locality, and must refer, if not to a life after death, at 
 least to eternity and a different order of existence from 
 this mundane one. But here, as elsewhere in religion, 
 an intimate knowledge of how the human mind in general 
 expresses itself entirely solves the puzzle created by a 
 phrase. 
 
 Let us analyse any situation that could give rise to a 
 supplication for help to the good in man. The very fact 
 that one is moved to pray implies a discontent with one's 
 actual conditions, inward or outward, and also a standard 
 on the part of the petitioner, in comparison with which 
 he becomes aware by how much the actual falls short of 
 his ideal. When he petitions, he is really asking that 
 what he sees in his vision of the Perfect shall be embodied 
 as fact in actual life in his own or that of others. The 
 Perfect the Good exists only as yet in the moral 
 imagination. At least it is an abstraction, an ideal con- 
 struction from mere hints found in the concrete fullness 
 of life. So, too, the tendencies that make for its ultimate 
 embodiment constitute an abstraction ; they are dis- 
 tinguished and unified in thought, but in experience are 
 not separated from counteracting forces nor organically 
 bound together. If, then, the Perfect and the forces that 
 favour it are to be called " our Father," we must admit 
 that he exists only in the ideal realm of our imagination, 
 and we must qualify our speech in such a way as to 
 indicate that he does not rule in fact as he does in moral 
 right. He is our Father " in heaven " only. 
 
 The contrast between what ought to be and what is, 
 together with the sense that what ought to be is no mere 
 figment of fancy, but is the soul of the actual, is so vital 
 that we could not omit it from any compendious state- 
 ment of personal and national idealism. In praying to 
 
122 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 the good in man we should need to say : " Thy will be 
 done in actual life as in our moral vision we see that it 
 ought to be done." 
 
 If we turn to consider the use of the word " heaven " 
 in secular and religious literature in general, we discover 
 that it refers to an ideal state of society as contrasted with 
 actual families, cities and nations. We detect that only 
 a lack of poetic imagination has caused men to interpret 
 the Bible use of the word heaven to mean a real " other 
 world," a different order of actual existence, literally 
 removed in time and space from human life on earth. 
 
 But, as I have said, a knowledge of how the human 
 mind expresses itself in general will correct this blunder. 
 Great minds always borrow directly from physical objects 
 and relations words to express moral factors and con- 
 nections. They, for instance, use the word heaven to 
 mean the inner sky of the moral vision. They must either 
 speak thus figuratively or say nothing to convey their 
 meanings and emotions. Universally, that which is counted 
 desirable, admirable, worthy and perfect is designated as 
 high, and that which is contemptible and despicable as 
 low. What is above us means what is morally not yet 
 attained ; and when we speak of a man's having " high " 
 standards we do not even feel the figurativeness of the 
 words. The high is altogether associated in literature 
 with what is joyful, innocent, pure and rarely attained ; 
 and the low with the opposite. 
 
 Not only is this use a psychological necessity of speech, 
 but its justification is embedded in the physical sensations 
 associated with moral moods. Prior to any conscious 
 thought or use of language as a system of signs for com- 
 municating ideas, is the spontaneous holding of the head 
 high when hope abounds and a distant goal fixes and 
 tones the spirit. On the other hand, equally radical in 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 123 
 
 our physical organism is the sinking of the head yes, 
 even the literal falling down of the whole body when 
 despair or self-condemnation overcomes us. Emotionally 
 true and inevitable, therefore, is the appellation "most 
 high " to one's God, to the power to which one looks in 
 confident expectancy for deliverance from evil. Now, the 
 word heaven is but a synonym for the highest for that 
 part of the visible universe remotest from what is beneath 
 our feet. Here, then, is an adequate reason for the 
 retention of the word in a naturalistic scheme of redemp- 
 tion ; but there are other reasons. For it happens that 
 that which is literally above our heads is also supremely 
 splendid to our senses, and still more magnificent to the 
 scientific imagination. So that in associating the moral 
 ideal with the heavens above us we are associating that 
 which is how else can I express it ? morally most 
 high and of dazzling glory with that which is physically 
 the same. I am ready to concede that for the visualising 
 imagination the moral ideal as far transcends in glory 
 the sun and moon and stars as these the earth beneath 
 our feet ; but as we have only the outward universe to 
 use as symbol and illustration, it is no dishonour to 
 the inward that the symbol we choose is not wholly 
 adequate ; better inadequacy of expression than speech- 
 lessness. 
 
 In writing the oft-quoted passage where he specifies 
 the starry heavens above and the moral law within as the 
 two most sublime realities of experience and thought, 
 Immanuel Kant was not led to this association of the 
 ideal of duty with the visible sky by the Bible habit of 
 connecting the two, but by the very nature of things 
 and by his intimate knowledge of astronomy and ethics. 
 And, likewise, it was undoubtedly the deep moral insight 
 of ancient shepherds, together with their knowledge of 
 
i2 4 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 the motions of the stars and their use of the stars as 
 lamps and guide-posts at night, that first occasioned and 
 then preserved to us the association of Righteousness 
 with the heavens. 
 
 The most interesting connotation of the word heaven, 
 however, is its social implication. In Christian literature 
 it has always meant the ideal of human society. It 
 suggests undoubtedly the bliss of individual persons, but 
 a bliss due to communion. Quite secondary and derived 
 is the identification of heaven with a society of the blest 
 after death ; and in the Lord's Prayer the meaning cannot 
 be, " Our Father who art in a life after death," or " Thy 
 will be done on earth as it will be done in our life after 
 death." 
 
 Not only distinctively Christian literature but all 
 poetic expression betrays the same delicate intuition which 
 identifies the word heaven with the blissful communion 
 of the good. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for instance, who 
 was wholly incurious as to a life after death, expresses 
 this identification in the noble little poem of three lines 
 which reads : 
 
 Oh, what is heaven but the fellowship 
 
 Of minds that each can stand against the world 
 
 By its own meek and incorruptible will ? 
 
 We see the same connotation in the words from William 
 Morris's Dream of John Ball, which have become a 
 watchword in the Labour movement of England : " For- 
 sooth, brothers, fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellow- 
 ship is hell." Likewise George Eliot, who wholly 
 rejected the old-fashioned interpretation of one's spiritual 
 aspiration as a desire to leave this world and go to another 
 after death, retained the word heaven when she needed a 
 single term to indicate the spiritual joy of social service. 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 125 
 
 It was no lack of literary boldness or of positivistic 
 sentiment that caused her to love and use this word : 
 
 So to live is heaven : 
 To make undying music in the world. 
 
 May I reach 
 
 That purest heaven, be to other souls 
 The cup of strength in some great agony. 
 
 Moreover, the higher criticism of the New Testament 
 must convince everyone that in the consciousness of the 
 first Christians the word heaven had reference not to a 
 life after death, but to a redeemed earth, as pictured in 
 moral vision and expected in moral faith. The entire 
 meaning of all the parables on the Kingdom of Heaven 
 is lost except on such an interpretation. It cannot, there- 
 fore, be maintained that to interpret the word heaven in 
 a humanistic and naturalistic sense is to force or distort 
 its original significance in Christian literature. 
 
 3. The Lord's Prayer divides itself into two groups 
 of clauses not unlike those of the Decalogue. The first 
 three petitions are strikingly analogous to the first four 
 commandments ; they are in the same sense religious and 
 theological. While the first four commandments demand 
 that there shall be no other God, that no material objects 
 shall be set up for worship, that God's name shall not be 
 taken in vain, and that one day in seven shall be kept in 
 homage of him, the Lord's Prayer opens with demands 
 that the name of the Power invoked be held sacred, that 
 his will be executed among men and his kingdom 
 established. The petition " Hallowed be thy name " 
 is nothing more than a sympathetic chord sounding back 
 in response to the commandment, " Thou shalt not take 
 the name of the Lord thy God in vain." 
 
126 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 What I have said in regard to the psychological 
 potency of names, due to their association with the 
 things they signify, makes it possible for my comment 
 here to be brief. Every advance in science has been 
 rendered possible only by a corresponding increase of 
 precision and accuracy in the use of words. If religion 
 has shown no evolution of language corresponding to 
 that of the terminology of science, it is because of a false 
 conception as to the way of showing respect for a word. 
 To hallow God's name can consist only in never using 
 it without a living and discriminating sense of what it 
 stands for, and thus finding ever new and deeper 
 meanings for it ; and the clause " Hallowed be thy 
 name," when thus interpreted, becomes fruitful of the 
 finest mental effects, making the spirit sensitive and 
 alert to realities beyond the face value of the words. 
 
 Note the jealousy and the subtlety with which scientific 
 nomenclature is secured against becoming vague and 
 lax. This jealousy shows that the first rule for scientific 
 discipline is " Hallowed be thy name." From the 
 scientific point of view, the opposite of the hallowing is 
 the vulgarisation of a name. Vulgarisation in science is 
 a thing dreaded by its expert devotees, but it is not due 
 primarily to an incapacity on the part of the masses to 
 think or observe or be interested ; it is due to their lack 
 of exactitude in speech and skill in using words. Every- 
 day language is adapted only for the commonplace 
 distinctions needed in the rough-and-tumble of practical 
 life ; the first step, therefore, in scientific education is a 
 training in definition and in stricter application of terms 
 familiar to the populace. 
 
 When moral idealism is recognised by the priests and 
 preachers of England to be the essence of the Church's 
 message and the reason for the Church's existence, it will 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 127 
 
 be clearly seen that one of the first needs in religion, as 
 in science, is to assert the sanctity of terms. Re-interpre- 
 tation and revision will then be recognised as one of the 
 first and permanent acts of piety, as a proof of genuine 
 prayer, and as a test of its fulfilment. Piety in the use 
 of terms will mean a fine exactitude in connotation and 
 denotation, always accompanying the word with a direct 
 perception of the reality it stands for and with a reverence 
 worthy of the factor designated. " Hallowed be thy 
 name," then, must stand as the first petition in a prayer 
 addressed to the Power of Righteousness inherent in the 
 nature of things. 
 
 4. It is in the second and third petitions, "Thy 
 kingdom come, thy will be done," that we particularly 
 find the justification for regarding the Lord's Prayer as 
 a summary of the whole gospel ; for the whole gospel 
 was tidings that the kingdom had begun, and that the 
 work of its establishment was now to be completed. The 
 gospel is the joyful summons to the work. There is no 
 occasion here for me to elaborate the arguments which 
 may be cited to justify this interpretation, as I am only 
 speaking in accord with what all unbiassed students of 
 the New Testament to-day declare, and as it is under their 
 tutelage without originality or authority of my own as 
 an investigator of historic fact that I have arrived at 
 this view. The question for us is : In a formula which 
 is to be a compendium of scientific and social-democratic 
 idealism, is there as much reason for retaining these two 
 petitions as there was for using them in a scheme of 
 salvation which looked to supernatural agents ? It is 
 difBcult to see how the change from supernaturalism to 
 naturalism can affect their value, for that change concerns 
 not the end of Christianity but only its means. The 
 goal of humanistic faith and social-democratic vision 
 
128 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 being identical with that of the old faiths the coming 
 of a kingdom of righteousness and the reign of good-will 
 among men these clauses of the Lord's Prayer have 
 the same value as before. We could not invent a better 
 formula. Further, it is not a new kingdom that the 
 idealistic humanist is building up to-day ; it is the same 
 kingdom of which the foundation was laid ages ago by 
 Jesus Christ, and of which the completion has been 
 delayed even until now, for lack of the material resources 
 which science is only now opening up to us, and of the 
 spiritual energies which social democracy is for the first 
 time liberating. 
 
 5. In answer to the question, Who may fittingly utter 
 the Lord's Prayer ? we find many hints and clues in the 
 prayer itself, as well as in the context of Luke and 
 Matthew. 
 
 As to the evidences furnished by the prayer itself, 
 some are discoverable even in its formal structure. As 
 in the commandments the " thou " and the " thy " showed 
 that they were addressed to each individual constituting 
 the nation in his separate moral responsibility, so the 
 "our," the "us" and the "we" in the Lord's Prayer 
 indicate plainly that it is to be uttered by individuals, 
 and yet not in moral isolation from one another, as they 
 are addressed in the Decalogue, but as banded together. 
 
 The context of the Lord's Prayer, both in Luke and 
 Matthew, reinforces our conclusion that the suppliants 
 are individuals voluntarily grouped together, and that 
 these are none other than the disciples, who were soon 
 to become propagandists and organisers of the kingdom 
 of God. According to Matthew, as we have seen, it was 
 when Christ was withdrawn with the disciples alone that he 
 gave the Sermon on the Mount, in which is inserted the 
 prayer. According to Luke, he gave it to one disciple 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 129 
 
 for all of them. And the prayer in its contents is plainly 
 and pre-eminently appropriate to members of the organisa- 
 tion Jesus founded, or of any other which is closely 
 analogous or identical in principle and aim. Indeed, 
 the second and third petitions are little more than varying 
 forms of each other, each expressing the desire of the 
 Apostles that the work to which they have committed 
 themselves may prosper. 
 
 It will be noticed that I have not been asking for whom 
 exclusively the use of the Lord's Prayer is appropriate. 
 One may well recognise the legitimacy of its use by 
 persons whose situation and purpose it does not perfectly 
 fit. Yet, in proportion as the situation and character of 
 the suppliants deviate from those of an organised band 
 of spiritual reformers of society, the prayer fails of import. 
 This principle, however, has been wholly overlooked in 
 the general practice of Christians, and thereby the specific 
 significance of the prayer has been obscured. 
 
 For instance, the universal practice of teaching little 
 children to utter this as their private, personal supplica- 
 tion night and morning betrays a lack of discrimination. 
 Had not an uncritical acceptance converted the Lord's 
 Prayer into a universal talisman, beautiful and inspiring 
 supplications, as well fitted to the circumstance and 
 character of little children as was this prayer to that of 
 the disciples, would have been devised ages ago and 
 brought into general use. I anticipate that a deeper 
 insight and reverence for the Lord's Prayer will lead to 
 a reservation of it for those who are mature enough fully 
 to understand the import of its clauses, and who have 
 positively committed themselves by public avowal to the 
 coming of the Kingdom on earth. Then little children 
 may be allowed to hear others utter this prayer, but 
 will be taught to count it so sacred that they cannot 
 
 9 
 
130 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 yet enter into the privilege of using it as their own 
 daily petition. The only justification for the practice of 
 drilling children by its daily recitation is that thus it will 
 enter so deeply into their minds that when the mature 
 years come for self-conscious dedication, their subjective 
 attitude will be prepared. But it is a question whether 
 the daily use of words which do not fit the personal 
 situation at the time may not have the very opposite 
 effect to that desired. It is a common observation that 
 persons may utter a set form of prayer throughout their 
 youth and yet, if the supplication has been superimposed 
 by another's will and does not express their own inner 
 purpose and outer situation, may reject it with abhor- 
 rence when their judgment ripens. Now, every clause of 
 the Lord's Prayer contains elements inapt for a child. It 
 is not, for instance, appropriate that a person under the 
 age of fourteen, whose will, foresight and experience of 
 life must be relatively nothing, should begin a night and 
 morning invocation with the words " we," " us " and 
 " our," instead of " I," " me " and mine." Who are the 
 " we " with whom a child could identify himself ? It is the 
 growing consciousness of self which is the child's supreme 
 concern, and the supplications should lead him to a sense 
 of his individual relations, duties, trials and privileges. 
 At least the first two even of the doggerel lines, 
 
 Now I lay me down to sleep, 
 I pray the Lord my soul to keep, 
 
 are nearer the inner truth of a child's life and need than 
 is the Lord's Prayer ; and if the two following lines, 
 
 If I die before I wake, 
 
 I pray the Lord my soul to take, 
 
 do not seem so suitable, nevertheless it would be easy to 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 131 
 
 discover a modern analogue to this expression of the 
 confident and peaceful surrender of oneself, in the act of 
 falling asleep, to the large enfolding influences from 
 which the child has derived its nature and is receiving 
 its nourishment and happiness. 
 
 Possibly the epithet "Father" in the Lord's Prayer 
 has suggested the notion that its series of supplications 
 must somehow be appropriate for a child. This notion, 
 although quite a logical deduction since the word 
 " father " is correlative to the word " child " betrays an 
 absence of delicate sensitiveness to the fitness of things. 
 If mothers had come to Jesus asking him to teach their 
 little ones how to pray, one cannot imagine that he 
 would have given them the form he gave his disciples, 
 which is patently for the use of persons morally mature 
 and dedicated to the cause of the good in the world. 
 Only such " children " could call the spiritual power that 
 organises human society " Father." 
 
 There is no implication anywhere in the prayer that the 
 metaphor of father implies immaturity and inexperience 
 on the part of the children supplicating. The prayer 
 does not presuppose that those who use it are relatively 
 ignorant, confused, vague or half blind, or are conscious 
 of any such deficiencies ; on the contrary, it assumes that 
 they are already fully awakened to selfhood, and have 
 even discovered personal equality and moral identity of 
 purpose with their Father, and feel mystic fellowship with 
 him in spirit. How else could they with sincerity ask 
 that the kingdom should come ? 
 
 Thus it follows that another class besides the young 
 are excluded from using the Lord's Prayer with full 
 appropriateness. It is morally impossible that it should 
 be repeated as their own souls' utterance by persons who 
 are not interested in the establishment on earth of such 
 
132 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 a society as Jesus and the Apostles were attempting to 
 found. One wholly indifferent to such a work, much 
 more one cynical or even sceptical of the possibility of 
 Christ's scheme, could not say the Lord's Prayer except 
 in absolute unthinkingness or mockingly or hypocritically ; 
 yet other prayers might be both fitting and helpful for 
 the indifferent and the proudly unregenerate, in their 
 hours of affliction and trial. 
 
 Indeed, one must affirm that the Lord's Prayer is not 
 an appropriate utterance even for the sinner who is contrite ; 
 for none of its clauses betray the slightest sense of peni- 
 tence or of any inward ground for penitence. Even the 
 petition for forgiveness of sins is qualified by an assertion 
 of the consciousness of inward integrity. There is, to be 
 sure, no implication that the suppliants are above the 
 possibility of sinning ; nevertheless it is quite clear that 
 they are grown-up men who have begun a new life, and 
 whose new life has taken the form of corporate action with 
 others, to make the world purer, kinder and truer. In 
 the Lord's Prayer it is not the sinful side of the sinner 
 but the redeemed part that is speaking. It is not the 
 sighing of the sufferer or the wail of the morally weak 
 that is heard ; it is the heart of the new life, the new 
 energy the life of Christ, of his vision and enthusiasm 
 that pulsates through and through the prayer and gives 
 form and power to it. It is not the bad in man but the 
 good that is asserting itself ; it is not even the good 
 asserting itself against the bad, but the good going out to 
 join itself with the universal good, and challenging that to 
 such a manifestation of power as had never yet been 
 witnessed. 
 
 It becomes quite evident that the Lord's Prayer issues 
 from a kingly disposition, from a consciousness of moral 
 sovereignty. It is as if the moral will diffused among the 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 133 
 
 individuals of a private group of men were appealing to 
 the latent sovereignty and majesty of the community as 
 a whole. 
 
 It is a prayer from the God in individual men to the 
 God in churches, cities, nations. No instinct could have 
 been truer than that which has called this prayer the 
 Lord's, for it must have been Christ's own personal prayer, 
 the outpouring of his own soul's secret. It, no doubt, 
 manifests a sense of physical dependence and a con- 
 sciousness of liability to sin and to be ensnared by evil ; 
 but it implies no prostration of a moral inferior before 
 one morally superior. On the contrary, spiritual fellow- 
 ship of the suppliant with the power entreated identity 
 of aim and principle is its dominant note. 
 
 It seems to have been overlooked by everyone that 
 the petitions of the Lord's Prayer are all unconditional, or 
 what Kant would have called categorical, imperatives. 
 Indeed, they may just as well be called commandments as 
 prayers, summonses as moral entreaties. I say they are 
 all unconditional, as the prayer " Not my will but thine 
 be done " must inevitably be counted. If one had never 
 before heard the prayer, and were asked, "Are the 
 sentences, c Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, 
 thy will be done, give us our daily bread, forgive us our 
 sins, lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil,' 
 commandments or supplications imperatives or peti- 
 tions ? " the answer would be, " They are moral im- 
 peratives." It is wholly inconsistent with the kinds of 
 things asked for to interpret the clauses as if they implied 
 a deferring of the petitioner's judgment to that of the 
 person petitioned. It is inconceivable that the meaning 
 could be, " If it please thee, let thy name be hallowed ; if 
 thou seest fit, let thy kingdom come ; if thou thinkest 
 well of it, feed us for the coming day and forgive us as 
 
134 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 we forgive others ; if thou art so disposed, lead us not 
 into temptation and deliver us from evil." The meaning, 
 on the contrary, is evidently, " Thou must make thy name 
 hallowed, thy will done and thy kingdom come ; thou 
 must give us bread for the coming day and forgive us as 
 we forgive ; thou must not lead us into temptation but 
 deliver us from evil." A surrender of their own moral 
 judgment by the suppliants would destroy the worth of 
 the supplication. Spiritual humilities on the part of one 
 uttering this prayer, doubts as to the moral necessity of 
 the things asked for, would be as little in keeping with 
 the character of the petitions as they would be on the 
 part of the being who issued the Ten Commandments. 
 We cannot conceive the commandments made conditional, 
 as if they meant, " Be so kind as not to bear false witness 
 or steal or murder ; do me the favour of honouring thy 
 father and thy mother and regarding righteousness as 
 holy." The tone of the Lord's Prayer is such as can be 
 uttered and felt only by one filled with a mighty purpose 
 of which he is in no wise ashamed ; it is, I repeat, the 
 prayer of one conscious of having grown spiritually 
 identical in character and intent with the universal will 
 which he addresses. By this intuitive self-trust imputed 
 to the petitioners, the Lord's Prayer is shown to issue from 
 the same moral sovereignty which is presented in the Deca- 
 logue as issuing that. 
 
 Indeed, the sublimity of the prayer is due to the moral 
 worth attributed in it implicitly to the persons expected 
 to use it. It implies that they clearly see what is right, 
 and that what they ask for, they ask for because it 
 is right. Now, in one who desires what ought to be 
 out of love for what ought to be, there can be nothing 
 of the moral slave or beggar. In a person who asks 
 what is right of another because it is right, there can 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 135 
 
 be no surrender of his own personal identity to that of 
 another, except in so far as he knows that in that other he 
 shall find himself again. When a man desires what is 
 right because it is right, he thereby becomes a free, 
 creative personality ; he may feel his identity with a will 
 larger than his own, but with an accompanying sense of 
 self-expansion. He may be said to do and to want to do 
 what God desires, but this is true of him only because 
 the divinity he worships is immanent in him as well as 
 in others. 
 
 The interpretation which I have here given as to the 
 implied spiritual worth of the suppliants who are to utter 
 the Lord's Prayer accords with what I have said in the 
 previous chapter as to the historic evolution of Jewish 
 religion. The consciousness of the good will among men 
 as the redemptive power of nations was now lodged 
 chiefly in the breasts of Christ and his disciples. They 
 were the luminous points of divinity ; but they felt that the 
 light of a perfect day would require a central manifestation 
 of righteousness in the sovereignty of their city and 
 nation, and of all cities and all nations, as organic units of 
 social life. 
 
 6. If we turn to analyse in detail the last four petitions 
 of the prayer, we find many indirect confirmations of our 
 interpretation. Take the petition " Give us our bread 
 for the coming day." It reflects with absolute truth 
 outward and inward only the life of those who are 
 dedicated as missionaries to the establishment of a kingdom 
 of social justice, and who ask to receive their sustenance 
 for the day, but no more ; and that not as a compensation 
 or reward, but as a means enabling them to continue their 
 work. There will surely come a time when persons who 
 devote the greater part of their brain-power every day to 
 heaping up riches, will attain too much spiritual discrimina- 
 
136 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 tion to presume to ask, as they do now, only for bread 
 (which is the symbol of the barest necessities), and that 
 only for the coming day. There is no occasion here to 
 censure those who devote themselves to amassing wealth, 
 but there is cause for suggesting that they should at least 
 omit this clause when they utter the Lord's Prayer. Its 
 utterance by them must confuse the moral judgment 
 and produce intellectual bewilderment as to religious 
 experience and discipline. 
 
 The Lord's Prayer does not seem to me to imply that 
 everybody who utters it, besides being a disciple, must 
 also be an apostle that is, that besides wanting the 
 coming of the kingdom of heaven, he must also make the 
 preaching and organising of it his profession ; but its 
 implication is that he at least indirectly devotes his life 
 and fortune to the cause of social righteousness. It is 
 a prayer not simply for priests, and yet it is only for 
 devout people. 
 
 This clause asking for bread for the coming day does not 
 necessarily presuppose that the suppliant pursues no trade 
 or business which systematises his effort for wealth beyond 
 the immediate future ; yet it cannot be denied that in 
 the request for nothing more than bread for the day a 
 standard of extreme simplicity is set up, and an interest 
 in other ends than those of material abundance and 
 security for the individual is implied. The Lord's 
 Prayer here seems to encourage the professional organiser 
 and preacher of religion to take no thought for the 
 morrow, and possibly to set a standard for all persons 
 whose profession is social service. Nevertheless, there 
 is no implication here or in any other part of the New 
 Testament that the community as a whole should not 
 be provident. In the Kingdom of Heaven no one will 
 be concerned for more than bread for the coming day 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 137 
 
 on his own account, but the kingdom as a whole, through 
 its central sovereignty, through the national organisation 
 of industry, will provide abundance for all, looking not 
 only years but centuries ahead. Indeed, the only way by 
 which the petition " Give us our bread for the coming 
 day" is ever to be fulfilled and to justify itself, is that 
 the rational good-will among men throughout a nation 
 organised to that end shall become a material providence 
 to every individual person. And it will only be by the 
 reiteration of this prayer, consciously addressed to the 
 community as a State, that its fulfilment will be secured. 
 Still more, the only way by which every human being can 
 get his bread for the coming day will be that no one shall 
 ask or get more for himself. And it would seem that 
 statesmen could find no better way to discipline the young 
 to the true idea of a co-operative commonwealth than 
 early to inculcate this clause of the Lord's Prayer thus 
 interpreted. 
 
 It is universally agreed that in this petition bread means 
 all physical necessities of life. Nor is it perhaps an 
 undue repetition of a thought constantly recurring in 
 these pages to say that, however incompatible with modern 
 science and modern humanism the supplication for material 
 blessings may be when addressed to a superhuman agency, 
 yet it is wholly consonant with our knowledge and mastery 
 of the sources of wealth, and our ideal of the relations 
 of the individual and the State, for the individuals of a 
 nation to ask the nation as an organised unit of economic 
 activities to give them their bread for the coming day. 
 
 7. Another most interesting confirmation of religious 
 humanism is found in the interpretation which the new 
 scholarship gives to Christ's teaching concerning the 
 forgiveness of sins, and therefore to the clause "And 
 forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone 
 
138 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 that is indebted to us." Professor Nathaniel Schmidt, in 
 his article on " The Son of Man " in the Encyclopedia 
 Biblica, basing his argument upon philological grounds, has 
 called the attention of the world to the fact that Jesus 
 Christ taught that it is in the power of man to forgive sins. 
 Schmidt maintains that when Christ used the words " Son 
 of Man," he meant simply man, and did not refer to 
 himself as a unique personage with peculiar power to 
 absolve from transgression and its effects. Just as Christ 
 maintained that the sabbath was made for man, so he 
 taught that man had power to forgive sins. How wholly 
 in harmony is this interpretation with the idea for which I 
 have been contending that the Lord's Prayer is addressed 
 to the good-will of the community as a whole, and that 
 the good-will among men throughout the nation is 
 supplicated to forgive the transgressions of the penitent, 
 whose penitence, of course, can then consist in nothing 
 more than the desire to become identified in purpose and 
 service with the universal will of humanity. 
 
 Probably there is no more terrible and tragic idea in 
 the whole annals of religious supernaturalism than the 
 notion that, when a man has transgressed the moral law, 
 it is not sufficient that he shall be forgiven by himself, by 
 others and by the community as a whole, but must also 
 receive pardon from a superhuman agent. It was this, 
 according to Professor Schmidt, which Jesus controverted 
 in teaching that forgiveness and refusal to forgive were 
 practices and dispositions only of man with man, and that 
 the test of their righteousness was their benefit to man. 
 
 When we think of the Lord's Prayer as especially ad- 
 dressed to the good-will which inheres in the community as 
 a whole and is organised in the State, we see the perfect 
 tenderness and moral delicacy, as well as the logic, of the 
 prayer : " Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 139 
 
 trespass against us." This petition presupposes that it is 
 to be uttered only by persons who themselves have forgiven 
 all their enemies ; for only on the basis of their own clear 
 conscience as regards this duty and of their devotion to 
 the good-will of the whole, do they ask that they shall 
 be accepted by the community despite their own past 
 transgressions. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that in attempting to identify 
 the power to whom the Lord's Prayer is addressed with 
 the unifying will of the community, I have always had 
 in mind that though this will had become incarnate in 
 the organised movement founded by Christ and the 
 Apostles, yet it is an ideal rather than a fact. In the 
 religious sphere, forgiveness is not between the in- 
 dividual and the actual community ; when in his own 
 conscience a man has forgiven his fellow-mortals, he is 
 inwardly aware that he is in harmony with the animating 
 principle of all society, and he knows that his sins are 
 forgiven ; he is well assured that St Matthew is right 
 in putting into the mouth of Jesus the words, " For if ye 
 forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also 
 forgive you : but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, 
 neither will your heavenly Father forgive your trespasses." 
 
 The principle that Man can and must forgive those 
 men who have forgiven their enemies, becomes self- 
 evidently true, in the light of the conception of human 
 society embodied in Shelley's immortal lines from the 
 Prometheus Unbound: 
 
 Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, 
 Whose nature is its own divine control, 
 Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea ; 
 Familiar acts are beautiful through love ; 
 Labour, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove 
 Sport like tame beasts : none knew how gentle they could be ! 
 
1 40 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 8. The petition " Lead us not into temptation " must 
 remain a moral puzzle, so long as the prayer is conceived 
 of as addressed to a being, infinite in goodness and power, 
 in whose consciousness there is no admixture of error 
 or wrong-doing. It requires more than the subtlety of 
 sophistic dialectics to make it plausible that an infinite 
 agent, perfect in tenderness and resources, could bring 
 anyone into real temptation. It might be said that 
 temptation is of two kinds inward, through deficiency 
 of insight and strength on the part of the person tempted ; 
 or outward, where the allurement of circumstance is such 
 as practically to annihilate the free choice of any finite 
 will. But to bring a being into either form is irreconcil- 
 able with the idea of an all-powerful and at the same time 
 all-good agent. If he were all-powerful, to lead into 
 temptation would prove him less than infinite in good- 
 ness ; if he were all-good, it would prove him less than 
 infinitely powerful. But the moment the prayer is con- 
 ceived as addressed to the general will of the community, 
 the clause " Lead us not into temptation," far from being 
 a puzzle, becomes the very key to a puzzle. This unify- 
 ing will is good ; but, as actually manifesting itself, it 
 is not superior to error and its resources are limited. Not 
 only so, but, as we found when considering the power 
 of importunity, it is necessary to challenge the attention of 
 finite minds. We needs must ask those about us to 
 shield us both from our inward proneness and from blind- 
 ing allurements to transgression. 
 
 If, in defence of the old interpretation of the power to 
 whom the Lord's Prayer is addressed, it be said that the 
 infinite Creator leads his children into temptation only to 
 try their characters, we must protest that then he is 
 unworthy of worship. It is sometimes maintained that 
 although the Creator is all-powerful and all-good, his 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 141 
 
 goodness is not what would be goodness in finite creatures. 
 But if goodness in our God does not mean the same 
 in kind, however raised in degree, as it does when we 
 are judging of human deeds and human character, how 
 can we call it goodness ? Has anyone ever been able to 
 refute John Stuart Mill's eloquent protest against such 
 jugglery with the terms of the moral life ? 
 
 I take my stand [says Mill] on the acknowledged principle 
 of logic and of morality, that when we mean different things 
 we have no right to call them by the same name and to 
 apply to them the same predicates, moral and intellectual. 
 Language has no meaning for the words Just, Merciful, 
 Benevolent, save that in which we predicate them of our 
 fellow-mortals. And unless that is what we intend to express 
 by them we have no business to employ the words. If in 
 affirming them of God we do not mean to affirm those very 
 qualities, differing only as greater in degree, we are neither 
 philosophically nor morally entitled to affirm them at all. 
 
 If it be said that the qualities are the same, but that we 
 cannot conceive them as they are when raised to the 
 infinite, I grant that we cannot adequately conceive them 
 in one of their elements, their infinity. But we can con- 
 ceive them in their other elements, which are the very same 
 in the infinite as in the finite development. Anything 
 carried to the infinite must have all the properties of 
 the same thing as finite, except those which depend on the 
 finiteness. ... I know that infinite goodness must be 
 goodness, and that what is not consistent with goodness 
 is not consistent with infinite goodness. If in ascribing 
 goodness to God I do not mean what I mean by goodness ; 
 if I do not mean the goodness of which I have some 
 knowledge, but an incomprehensible attribute of an in- 
 comprehensible substance what for aught I know may be 
 a totally different quality from that which I love and 
 venerate what do I mean by calling it goodness, and what 
 reason have I for venerating it ? ... To say that God's 
 goodness may be different in kind from man's goodness, 
 what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, 
 that God may possibly not be good ? 
 
i 4 2 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Let us, then, stand by our ethical judgment, and assert 
 that a person's finiteness of physical power and mental 
 resources can be his only excuse for bringing another into 
 real temptation, inward or outward. But if the being 
 whom we ask to lead us not into temptation is thus finite 
 and yet may be moved to protect us, a rational basis for 
 our prayer is established. 
 
 9. We need spend little time upon the last injunction, 
 " Deliver us from evil." If we compare this rendering 
 with the more authentic one of the Revised Version, 
 " Deliver us from the evil one," our standpoint of social 
 expediency would perhaps lead us to choose the former, 
 lest the phrase " evil one " should be understood to imply 
 an extra-human personality. To unify and personify evil 
 here is no great gain, whereas anything that might tempt 
 the imagination away from the identification of evil with 
 the actual, concrete factors of mental, social and physical 
 life would be a loss. 
 
 The general reasons for the supplication " Deliver us 
 from evil " are on a line with the prayers for bread for 
 the coming day, for the forgiveness of sins and for 
 immunity from temptation, and therefore need not be 
 specified. 
 
 10. The phrase " For thine is the kingdom, the power 
 and the glory " is its own justification as a finish to the 
 Lord's Prayer, and no question as to its origin can touch 
 its claim to be retained. It beautifully lifts the spirit 
 of the suppliants from their personal need, weakness 
 and danger to the benignant power of the will of the 
 community. 
 
 I have presumed to point out that the Lord's Prayer 
 is not specifically adapted for the use of little children, of 
 the indifferent, of unregenerate sinners, of the poignantly 
 repentant, or of anyone in spiritual isolation. It pre- 
 
THE LORD'S PRAYER 143 
 
 supposes a group of persons banded together for the 
 actualisation of a definite end, and is a social act ; it 
 might even more aptly be designated the Church's 
 Prayer than the Lord's. In speaking thus of the Church, 
 I hope I do not obscure my meaning, which is that the 
 Lord's Prayer is a Congregation's prayer ; it is suitable 
 for any assembly for the advancement of human welfare. 
 Those who hold, moreover, as I do, that every nation, 
 in so far as it is the standard-bearer of the ideal of human 
 life, is a church, will readily pass to the position that the 
 Church's Prayer is the Nation's Prayer. The true patriot 
 will identify the Father with the higher will of his own 
 country, and the kingdom of heaven with the future of 
 his own land. 
 
 Thus our study of the Lord's Prayer from the point 
 of view of social utility has justified its retention as part 
 of a national scheme of moral instruction and edification. 
 In the future it may be used less generally because more 
 discriminatingly, but it will thereby become more 
 efficacious. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 
 
 I SHALL try to show that the Apostles', the Nicene and 
 the Athanasian Creeds, like the Decalogue and the Lord's 
 Prayer, are capable of being interpreted, without distortion, 
 as expressions of humanistic idealism. When thus viewed, 
 and when compared with analogous documents, they 
 stand forth as three of the profoundest and most ex- 
 pedient utterances ever promulgated ; and of the three, 
 the greatest is the Athanasian. 
 
 Wholly unwarranted is it on the part of persons who 
 have not devoted special study to religious experience and 
 expression, to cast this document aside, because its dis- 
 tinctions seem to possess no vital import. That to such 
 persons it sounds super-subtle, self-contradictory and 
 pedantic, is no proof that it really is so. The funda- 
 mental presuppositions of chemistry or physics, formulated 
 in as brief a compass, would appear to the uninitiated 
 equally empty and vain. And if it be maintained that 
 even to the philosophically initiated the Athanasian Creed 
 not only seems but is full of self-contradictions, it can 
 be answered that this objection applies equally against 
 the fundamental presuppositions of chemistry and physics. 
 It is as easy to expose to view unverified assumptions and 
 
 inherent inconsistencies of thought in a creed of modern 
 
 144 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 145 
 
 science as in the creed of the Church ; but if the defects 
 of a formula are not arbitrary, and if the formula be 
 accepted tentatively only, it must not be cast aside until 
 superseded by a better. 
 
 If it be argued that creeds short and precise formulae 
 of faiths are altogether a mistake, we must turn to 
 practical and theoretical teachers to decide for us. These, 
 as I have said, sanction a judicious use of compendiums of 
 knowledge. If the Creeds as compendiums must go, so 
 must the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 If it be maintained that in other departments of human 
 thought and experience the world has fared very well 
 without doctrinal confessions, it must be answered that 
 religion, if judged by its hold on masses of men, has fared 
 better with a creed than chemistry, physics, political 
 economy and psychology without one. The sciences 
 still wait to become popular ; their method and spirit 
 have not yet permeated the masses of any nation, despite 
 State educational systems in use for a century. Perhaps 
 the sciences must teach their creeds as indefatigably as 
 the Church has taught hers. 
 
 Sometimes the rejection of the Athanasian Creed is 
 based not on any dislike of creeds in general but on the 
 fact that it, like the Apostles' and the Nicene, was formu- 
 lated many centuries ago. The argument is that it must 
 by this time have become obsolete and useless ; we must 
 have outgrown it, as we have outgrown so many other 
 teachings of a pre-scientific age. If it had always been 
 held only tentatively and had been continually subjected 
 to revision, probably no vestige of it the argument runs 
 would have survived. Now, to decide whether it in 
 part or as a whole is to be cast to the rubbish-heap, we 
 must compare it carefully with our living experience to- 
 day and with the best formulation of that experience 
 
 10 
 
146 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 which we can make. We cannot argue a priori that be- 
 cause fixed in the fifth century after Christ, it is outworn. 
 Much beauty, many truths, blossomed to perfection long 
 before the Athanasian Creed was fixed, and yet are as fresh 
 and invigorating to-day as they were in the hour when 
 they first took shape. 
 
 Personally, when I read this creed on the supposition 
 that it is treating of natural factors in moral experience, 
 I detect only two errors in the whole of it its assertion 
 of the Virgin Birth and its assertion of the literal resur- 
 rection of Christ's spirit and body after his death. Setting 
 these two points aside, all its distinctions seem to me not 
 only true but of vital import to national welfare. 
 
 As to the two errors. First, the creed, in the clause 
 " And man, of the substance of his mother born in the 
 world," denies by implication that Jesus was begotten of 
 a human father. His humanity is traced wholly to his 
 mother. Now of course there is no biological impossi- 
 bility against the idea that Mary was with child, although 
 not according to the ordinary way. But the notion is 
 monstrous both morally and biologically that such an 
 incident could explain the moral purity and genius of 
 Christ. Evil and finiteness of personality are transmitted 
 from a human mother as much as from a human father. 
 So the moral and biological motive of the doctrine of the 
 Virgin Birth is gone for ever. This clause of the creed 
 should be amended so as to read : " And man, of 
 the substance of his human father and mother born in 
 the world." 
 
 This change would entail the necessity of an amendment 
 of the preceding clause, which now reads : " God, of the 
 substance of the Father, begotten before the world." It 
 is perfectly clear that the metaphorical use by Jesus of 
 the word "Father" as an epithet for the Being he 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 147 
 
 worshipped, led the next age, as metaphors are prone to 
 mislead the uncritical, into a confusion of thought. They 
 forgot that Christ's God was his father only in a meta- 
 phorical sense. Christ's God was Wisdom and Goodness 
 as active energies in life ; and his voluntary acceptance of 
 Wisdom and Goodness as the guide of action constituted 
 him also God. The creed is right, then, in saying that 
 Jesus Christ is both God and man. And the clause we 
 are considering might avoid all confusion if it were so 
 amended as to read : " God, of the substance of Wisdom 
 and Goodness." 
 
 The creed likewise seems to me to err in asserting that 
 Christ rose with his body after death, and that all men 
 will some day so rise. The clauses read : 
 
 Who suffered for our salvation : descended into hell, 
 rose again the third day from the dead. 
 
 He ascended into heaven, he sitteth on the right hand 
 of the Father, God Almighty : from whence he shall 
 come to judge the quick and the dead. 
 
 At whose coming all men shall rise again with their 
 bodies : and shall give account for their own works. 
 
 Now, there is nothing biologically or metaphysically 
 impossible in the notion that all men will rise with their 
 bodies after death. But it has become morally impossible 
 to retain the notion as a necessary support and inspiration 
 to our faith in righteousness. We no longer need to 
 believe that we shall rise again, either with or without 
 our bodies. We never should have needed it, had our 
 insight into the meaning and bearings of the good life 
 been clear and penetrating. The modern recognition 
 that moral faith does not need the belief in a life after 
 death is one of the greatest achievements which the 
 human spirit has ever made. It is a discovery in the 
 very spirit of the New Testament, that enthusiasm for 
 
148 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 holiness is not essentially dependent upon belief in the 
 survival either of the mind or body of anyone after death. 
 
 Let us assume, then, that the moral judgment of our 
 day discards the doctrine of the resurrection both of spirit 
 and body, solely because that doctrine is not needed in a 
 scheme of human redemption. Such a reason for dis- 
 carding it is more than sufficient. Who retains in any 
 practical scheme elements that are known to be super- 
 fluous ? Only one who is ready to sacrifice the efficiency 
 of the scheme to adventitious issues. 
 
 Granting, then, that the doctrine of the resurrection 
 both of spirit and body is to be omitted, we may, as 
 revisers and re-interpreters, proceed in two different ways 
 concerning these resurrection clauses of the creed. 
 
 First, we may delete them and substitute a statement 
 of the mental and social factors and incidents which in 
 the New Testament and in the creed are bound up with 
 the notion of bodily resurrection. The belief that upon 
 his death Christ descended into hell and rose on the third 
 day grew undoubtedly out of the fact that for the first 
 two days after his death the hearts of his disciples sank 
 in despair ; for two days the light of Christ's life was 
 extinguished for them. But on the third day they began 
 to take heart once more, and thus the spirit and work of 
 Christ died and rose again. The insight and enthusiasm 
 which once had lived in him alone and then was appar- 
 ently extinguished, now burst into a quickening and 
 enduring flame in the minds of the disciples. , They, 
 accordingly, with joyous gratitude, exalted him on high ; 
 they enthroned him in their souls at the right hand of 
 the Law of Righteousness. He became to them vitally 
 one with the Moral Law itself. With it, he would be 
 for ever coming to judge the morally quick and the 
 morally dead. 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 149 
 
 These historical factors and incidents, mental and 
 social, were so potent, and their effects have been so wide 
 and deep in human society, that they are worth preserving 
 in a compendium of moral faith. But it is possible to 
 preserve them, while omitting all reference to the resur- 
 rection of spirit or body after death. 
 
 There is, however, as I have said, a second way open 
 to us. The resurrection clauses might be retained, but 
 frankly as containing a myth. There is no harm in teach- 
 ing a myth as such. On the contrary, there may be a 
 great gain, when the myth is one which, like the belief 
 in the resurrection of Christ's body, has quite spon- 
 taneously and sincerely evolved out of some deep and 
 passionate experience. To retain the resurrection clauses 
 and interpret them literally would be to encumber our 
 educational scheme with embarrassing superfluities. But 
 to retain them, while interpreting them as a na'fve blend 
 of materialistic fancy and moral fact, would be a safeguard 
 in the future against a similar mistaking of fancy for fact. 
 Also, in preserving a record of the doctrine of the resur- 
 rection long after it had been outgrown, there would be 
 the advantage of being reminded by what road the human 
 mind had climbed. 
 
 Now to the other points of the creed. The first that 
 strikes our attention is the seemingly terrible assertion 
 that except everyone do keep whole and undefiled the 
 faith therein expressed, he shall without doubt perish 
 everlastingly. With this assertion the creed opens, and 
 the same thought is uttered in its closing words. It 
 begins 
 
 Whosoever will be saved : before all things it is 
 necessary that he hold the Catholick Faith. 
 
 Which Faith except every one do keep whole and 
 undefiled : without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. 
 
150 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 The closing words of the creed are 
 
 This is the Catholick Faith : which except a man believe 
 faithfully, he cannot be saved. 
 
 Does this declaration that salvation depends upon 
 orthodoxy of belief consist of sober truth, and therefore 
 of humane advice, or is it but a bringing down upon the 
 ignorant laity of the cloven hoof of priestly authority and 
 ascendency ? 
 
 To settle this point, we must first bear in mind what 
 the social and human aspect of " perishing everlastingly " 
 is. " Perishing " can mean nothing else than being shut 
 out from the life of the Church, and " everlastingly " 
 can only mean permanently ; " being saved," on the other 
 hand, must mean sharing the blessings of the Church's 
 life. The clause, then, is not so terrible after all: 
 "Which faith except every one do keep whole and un- 
 defiled, without doubt he shall be permanently excluded 
 from the privileges of Church membership." What 
 seemed so terribly unjust in the clause was due to the 
 supernaturalistic interpretation of it. Undoubtedly the 
 notion was morally monstrous that the Creator had 
 dictated this faith and would miraculously cause anyone 
 who did not keep it whole to be tortured for ever and 
 ever after death. 
 
 But having thus reduced the clause to its social 
 reference, we must, in order to estimate it soberly, 
 consider whether, besides churches, all other organisations 
 which stand for ideas exact subscription to their teachings 
 or not ; and, if they do so, whether such a policy of 
 condemning heretics by excluding them is expedient and 
 just or not. If we should find that the practice is 
 universal and unavoidable in all other social bodies for 
 the propagation of an idea, we must then ask : Shall the 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 151 
 
 Church be an exception to the general rule ? And, if so, 
 to what extent, and why ? 
 
 From a survey of other organisations, we find that they 
 are all equally jealous with the Church not only for their 
 ideas, but for such a formulation of them as will prevent 
 them from being misrepresented or distorted. In politics, 
 every party exacts rigid adherence to its principles and 
 programme, and in order to define these it is as ready as 
 the Church to resort to subtleties. Note the jealous 
 rallying out of what had seemed a twenty years 1 death 
 of the Liberal party to the principle of Free Trade 
 before the General Election of 1 906. There never was a 
 better illustration of the fact that the life of an organisa- 
 tion depends upon loyalty to an idea. Note, still further, 
 the subtleties of Mr Chamberlain and Mr Balfour in 
 order to point out the peculiar shade of the new doctrine 
 of Protection as distinguished from the old. To be just 
 to the Church, then, we must never forget that all secular 
 organisations practise, if they do not reiterate in words, 
 the principle of the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian 
 Creed. But the question now arises, are all these secular 
 organisations mistaken in their policy ? Could any party 
 admit heretics to active membership ? It is self-evident 
 that one which did would cease to exist. How could 
 Free Traders allow Protectionists into the organised 
 movement for Free Trade ? How could vegetarians 
 admit persons who advocated flesh-eating ? How could 
 anti-vaccinationists allow champions of vaccination to use 
 their meetings and appropriate money given to oppose 
 vaccination, for the defence of it ? Such a course would 
 be suicidal. And it is evident that if a question were to 
 arise as to what, for instance, vegetarianism is, the 
 vegetarian party, if it did not wish to become atrophied, 
 would be compelled to define exactly what it meant. No 
 
152 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 subtlety could be called empty or pedantic which was 
 necessary to meet difficulties as they arose. The principle, 
 then, that whosoever will be saved, before all things it is 
 necessary that he hold the faith, is practised by every 
 intelligent organisation ; and the negative side of the 
 principle is that he who does not keep the faith whole and 
 undefiled shall be extruded as a heretic. 
 
 The question, then, confronts us, Shall the Church be 
 an exception in its policy ? If not, it will be justified in 
 retaining its damnatory clauses ; if, however, the Church 
 wishes to be an exception, it must delete these clauses. It 
 is evident that a church which does not pretend to be 
 identical with a nation and is not established as a State 
 institution, and yet stands for definite ideas, is perfectly 
 consistent in driving out heretics, and must do so unless 
 it purposes suicide ; for any society which discards one 
 idea and adopts its very opposite has lost its personal 
 identity and ceased to be. It must be remembered, 
 however, that it is perfectly consistent with loyalty to 
 the fundamental principle of an institution that it should 
 go on evolving by rendering explicit what before was 
 implicit and possibly unconscious ; but no new point 
 added to a creed shall contradict the points already 
 accepted. Unhappily, as a historical fact, dissenting 
 bodies in England have forbidden both re-interpretation 
 and the addition of supplementary revelations, as well as 
 doctrines which would violate the vital principle of their 
 organisation ; and this has induced stagnation in them. 
 But the mere exclusion of heretics does not necessarily 
 involve an arrest of development. This is seen to be 
 possible, however paradoxical the statement at first seems, 
 if we remember that a creed is a formula which is 
 supposed to contain no truths that are not thought by 
 its supporters to be necessary to salvation. Should the 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 153 
 
 majority of the members of any nonconformist church 
 cease to hold to the articles of their creed, it would, of 
 course, be possible for them to adopt others, although 
 many theoretical and practical problems would arise. If 
 their property was owned by them on condition of teaching 
 a set formula, they might be morally obliged to forfeit it, 
 or gain legal permission to continue in possession of it. 
 A theoretical question which would arise would be 
 whether a church which changes its principle but not the 
 personnel of its membership is the same church or not. 
 My own judgment is that continuity of membership does 
 not constitute identity. A Unitarian church which adopted 
 the Athanasian Creed would surely cease to be a Unitarian 
 church, although it lost no member through the change. 
 
 If in a nonconformist body the question is not one 
 of a change of formula but of interpretation of the 
 formula, the question arises, Can it adopt a new and 
 opposite interpretation and still retain its personal identity ? 
 Do churches allow re-interpretations ? and, if they do, is 
 it a wise policy ? To these questions the answer surely 
 must be in the affirmative. New insight into an old 
 formula may cause a rejection of the earlier interpretation; 
 but if the new insight reveals a deeper meaning, a more 
 vital truth and a finer appositeness in the formula itself, 
 the new revelation must be accompanied with a sense that 
 not the old formula was at fault but the theoretical explana- 
 tion of it which had been adopted. Evolution, then, within 
 even a nonconformist body is possible by way of re- 
 interpretation ; and a man is not a heretic who finds his 
 insight best expressed in words by the creed of a church, 
 even if his insight differs from that of the majority of 
 the members. The question of heresy becomes one of 
 practical politics only when the old formula becomes 
 inadequate, as it very often does, for the new philosophy. 
 
154 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 But as my first concern is not with non-national and 
 non-established churches, let us consider what is a far 
 more complicated problem : whether a national State 
 Church can possibly remain or become truly national, 
 and yet maintain that the keeping of its formulated 
 teaching whole and undefiled is necessary to member- 
 ship in it. 
 
 Sir John Seeley, viewing the Church as the nation in 
 its idealistic trend, took the position that the Church 
 does not stand for an idea or a theory or doctrine ; it is 
 not, he said, a philosophical school ; it stands for a life 
 the higher social life of the whole nation. Intellectually 
 it is indifferent, or should be, to doctrine. No assent to 
 theoretical statements should be exacted either from clergy 
 or laity. 
 
 A similar position is advocated by the Modernists who 
 are not cut off from the Roman Catholic Church. The 
 laity, they say, are the real Church ; the rules of life 
 actually practised by Christ and his true imitators, and 
 the continuity of this life, constitute the Church. If 
 such be the case, membership is compatible with an 
 entire discarding of all the teachings ever promulgated 
 by the Church authorities. 
 
 I confess that this attitude of Seeley and some of the 
 Modernists seems to me impossible, and if adopted it would 
 prove fatal to the Church. The error at the basis of it 
 is the supposition that theory, intellect, philosophy, is not 
 an essential part of the moral life. The implication is 
 that it makes no difference what a man's philosophy is ; 
 but if, as I hold, theories, ideas, doctrines, in great part 
 determine conduct if it be true that without them what 
 a man does can scarcely be said to rise to the level of 
 human responsibility, and therefore of morality the 
 Church cannot afford to surrender dogma. She may 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 155 
 
 need to re-interpret it and revise it or reject it, but always 
 for another formula ; but to do without any dogma is for 
 her to commit intellectual suicide. 
 
 From this point of view it becomes evident that a 
 national State Church is confronted with a great dilemma. 
 She must stand for ideas, but how can she do so if she 
 pursues the policy of welcoming each and every phase of 
 opinion which exists in the nation ? Briefly to give the 
 solution of this dilemma, in order not further to digress 
 from the theme which has suggested it, I would say that 
 the Church's first duty is to the doctrine which she holds 
 in trust, and the difficulty only arises when she asks how 
 she can best in the end bring about universal loyalty to 
 that doctrine. Such universal loyalty does not mean 
 mere outward assent, but insight, and a free, rational 
 acceptance of her teaching. That kind of holding of the 
 faith which saves cannot be brought about by threats or 
 punishments or fears. Indeed, the history of religion 
 shows that perfect freedom of discussion and intimate 
 spiritual contact among those who hold different dogmas, 
 and prolonged controversy and conference with the object 
 of solving differences, is the only possible way of arriving 
 at unity of faith. The Church, then, for the sake of 
 unity and harmony, must herself encourage variety and 
 intellectual strife. The encouragement of difference of 
 faith is the only means of putting an end to difference of 
 faith. Superficially, then, the Church of England would 
 be inconsistent with herself if she were to recognise all 
 the different sects and welcome each, even including Jews, 
 Unitarians, and naturalists, and yet at the same time retain 
 the Athanasian Creed as an optional formula to be used 
 at the discretion of any congregation. But fundamentally 
 such a course, if it were adopted only as a means towards 
 the end of an ultimate universal acceptance of the Athan- 
 
156 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 asian Creed, would be wholly self - consistent. Her 
 catholicity and tolerance would then be not like that of 
 the Roman Empire, which in order to bring about im- 
 mediate peace recognised the gods and the doctrines of 
 every newly conquered race, nor would it have anything in 
 common with the policy of that Modernism which seems 
 to deny any importance to dogma. The Church would, on 
 the contrary, be assuming the position of a wise teacher, let 
 us say, of the doctrine of evolution, who would not only 
 allow, but stimulate to the utmost, the critical judgment of 
 his pupils, prompted thereto by his absolute confidence 
 in the irrefutability of the theory and the final acceptance 
 of it by everyone who was bold enough and capable 
 enough to grapple with the problem. All teachers of 
 science encourage independent thought, and greet with 
 respect every new objection which seems to assail the 
 tenets or the method of science. Likewise, every 
 religious prophet who has had real insight, feeling that 
 he was face to face with universal realities of moral ex- 
 perience, and that he attained this direct perception 
 only by challenging every claimant to truth, has attempted 
 to create the same inquiring spirit in others. But at 
 the same time he has announced his own revelation 
 and declared it to be necessary to salvation, which is 
 equivalent to asserting that he who does not attain it 
 perishes. 
 
 The next two sentences of the creed, which recall to 
 mind by contrast the Apostles* and the Nicene, read : 
 
 And the Catholick Faith is this : That we worship one 
 God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity ; 
 
 Neither confounding the Persons : nor dividing the 
 Substance. 
 
 For there is one Person of the Father, another of the 
 Son : and another of the Holy Ghost. 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 157 
 
 It seems not to have occurred to many who believe in 
 the Trinity, but yet prefer the Apostles' or the Nicene 
 Creed, that neither of these affirms this doctrine. Neither 
 of them declares that Father, Son and Holy Ghost are 
 three in one. Each points out the three, but does not 
 assert the unity. It is true that the Nicene Creed declares 
 that the Father is God and the Son is God, and the Holy 
 Ghost is Lord of life ; but to say that all three are God 
 is not to say that they are one. It might only indicate 
 that " God " was a general term, like the word " man," 
 and subsumed three persons just as the word "man" 
 subsumes many. The Apostles' Creed does not even 
 imply that the Holy Ghost is Lord nor that Jesus Christ 
 is God. In fact, not only is the unity of the three 
 unstated, but the equality of the three is in no wise 
 hinted at. On the contrary, one cannot read the Apostles' 
 Creed impartially and not feel that it implies the sub- 
 ordination both of Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost to 
 God the Father. Likewise, despite the epithet " Lord " 
 applied to the Holy Ghost, and " very God of very God " 
 to Jesus Christ, the Nicene Creed gives the impression 
 that both the second and third Persons of the Trinity are 
 subordinate to the first. The second is " begotten " by 
 the first, and the third " proceedeth " from the other two. 
 It is quite evident that, unless some statement were 
 expressly made to prevent the inference, an impartial 
 mind would conclude inferiority and subordination, and 
 therefore not a Trinity of equals. 
 
 If, then, the Church's faith is the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 the Athanasian Creed must supersede the other two. If 
 the doctrine of the Trinity not only is but ought to be 
 the teaching of the Church as I hope, in the light 
 of naturalism and democratic idealism, to show the 
 Athanasian Creed must morally as well as logically 
 
158 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 become the Church's weapon against heresy. I am not 
 implying that the Athanasian Creed should not be 
 subjected to revision, for I think it should ; but it 
 would still be the Athanasian Creed, if the modifications 
 were not untrue to the spirit of the original document, 
 and if they only consisted in removals of adventitious 
 defects. 
 
 Before taking up the remaining sentences of the creed, 
 let us turn to consider whether experience leads us, quite 
 independently of the Church's teaching, to a recognition 
 of three factors which it is morally of prime importance 
 for us to keep in mind, and yet each one of which is 
 equal with the others, and all are substantially one. 
 Suppose that we should find, further, that, of these three 
 factors, the second came from the first and the third 
 from the other two ; and that, in order to have a far- 
 sighted policy for the redemption of the world, we found 
 it was essential not to count any one of these factors 
 morally less significant than the others, but to regard all 
 three with equal deference and attention. And suppose 
 that such was the nature ascribed to God by the Athanasian 
 Creed. Would not this fact constrain us to believe that 
 the men who formulated it had experienced and dis- 
 criminated the same three moral factors as we had ? But 
 even if they had not, but had meant something else, 
 should we not appropriate their statement, provided it 
 was the best possible delineation of our own discovery, 
 and provided we took due care to leave no doubt in 
 anyone's mind as to our own meaning ? 
 
 Now, I believe that experience, under careful and wise 
 discrimination, does lead to the recognition of three 
 supreme factors in every moral and social polity, and that 
 all judicious statesmen must recognise their co-equality 
 and unity. I believe, further, that many a well-meant 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 159 
 
 movement and many an unselfish life have been ship- 
 wrecked because one of these three factors was exclusively 
 attended to or given precedence over the others. Salva- 
 tion depends upon the equal recognition of all three ; 
 and the work of that man fails everlastingly of achieve- 
 ment who does not keep the faith in all three whole and 
 undefiled. 
 
 But as I cannot lay claim to any such knowledge of 
 universal experience as would enable me to place this 
 belief of mine upon a truly objective and scientific basis, 
 I must fall back upon something like personal and 
 individual experience and testimony, and must be content 
 with simply turning the attention of my readers in the 
 direction in which my own has been drawn, in the hope that 
 they will for themselves look to their own experience and 
 see, if they have never noticed before, whether there be 
 not in it three such factors as are represented in the 
 Athanasian Creed. I say that this method of mine is not 
 objectively scientific. Yet in the present state of science 
 such a peculiarity cannot be accounted a defect. In 
 psychology, especially in the domain of the ethical life, 
 we have not passed beyond the stage where each man 
 must report his own experience and present his own 
 classification, asking that others shall judge his testimony 
 by the light of their own direct observation. Gradually 
 in this way an objective and universal witness will be 
 furnished. 
 
 My own evolution in religious thought has been from 
 belief in Principles only as the guide of life to an equal 
 belief in Persons, also, who best embody the principles ; 
 and thence to a co-equal belief in Parties made up of the 
 persons devoted to the principles. I became convinced 
 that the man who follows only principles as he sees them, 
 but keeps aloof from identifying himself in discipleship 
 
160 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 and fellowship with persons and parties, is in great danger 
 of mental eccentricity, narrowness, blindness and self- 
 deification. A man cannot save his soul simply by devo- 
 tion to abstract ideas. Not only he suffers, however, but 
 the world loses a great part of the benefit it might receive 
 from him, were he to show equal devotion to the persons 
 and the parties who embody the ideas. To me, a denial 
 of the need of holy friendship and organised co-operation 
 soon seemed to be the besetting sin of the higher type of 
 character. It was a sin of an intellectual order. The 
 man who held aloof from persons and stayed outside the 
 party devoted to his truth, I saw to be a heretic, and I 
 realised that this heresy was such that, if it spread, the 
 world could never be saved. 
 
 As I have advanced in years I have further come to 
 realise that even in youth I was not simply following 
 ideas, and was not inspired merely by the inner law of 
 my own reason, although I then imagined that it was so. 
 Time has revealed to me that my debt in youth to the 
 persons who taught me principles was as great as that 
 to the principles themselves. How could it be otherwise ? 
 I now even see that those very principles which I still 
 hold and worship were themselves emanations as well as 
 visions of the peculiar characters and temperaments of 
 the persons who were my moral and intellectual guardians 
 and guides. I also with the years saw clearly that, 
 although there was no party that these teachers and I 
 belonged to, nevertheless there was an organised social 
 group which, over and above its isolated members, stood 
 for the principles I readily and thankfully accepted as true. 
 Many a family, where the parents agree in principle and 
 thought, is in reality a religious party ; there are con- 
 ferences and discussions, there is co-operation and 
 propaganda, there is a mission work done which no 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 161 
 
 isolated member, nor all severally, could do. And as one 
 looks back upon one's life it becomes a necessity of human 
 piety to regard as co-equal in worth with the principles 
 one learned, the persons and the party from whom and by 
 virtue of which one imbibed them. Devotion to principle 
 induces intellectual integrity and moral self-reliance ; love 
 of one's spiritual guides grows into gratitude, humility 
 and purity ; fidelity to the organised group-life generates 
 enthusiasm, a passion to reform the world, a sense of the 
 greatness of the cause, and a readiness on occasion to 
 sacrifice even one's own life for it. 
 
 It is to be noted that there are three distinct ways of 
 understanding the dynamics of history ; and that each is 
 wrong if taken as adequate in itself, but that all are right 
 if seen to refer not to three powers existing separately, but 
 to three in one. Some say that the upward-moving 
 forces in history are, and always have been, ideas ; ideas 
 inspire multitudes to die gladly for them. Others equally 
 contend that only men great personalities, living, con- 
 crete, individual human beings have been the lifting and 
 guiding power in the upward evolution of nations and of 
 the world. Then there is a third school, which declares 
 that it has ever been some instinctive social mass the 
 blind cohesive energy of a nation, a church, a state, a city, 
 a tribe that has initiated and given momentum to 
 human advancement. 
 
 Now, it is true that sometimes ideas alone have been 
 the dynamic force, sometimes only a person, and again 
 only a party. But it has been a calamity to the cause of 
 the good, wherever ideas have dominated at the expense of 
 person or group, or either the person or the group has 
 dominated at the expense of the ideas. The true philo- 
 sophy of history recognises alike groups, persons and 
 ideas. It further sees that a person is great because 
 
 II 
 
1 62 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 of the idea that dominates him. As a personality he 
 is a divine power because he embodies the idea. A 
 man may have lived for thirty years and not been a 
 Person, in the sense which the word has in history 
 not a great man ; and then apparently all of a sudden 
 he may become the living embodiment of an idea 
 and, being lifted up by it, draw all men unto him. 
 Likewise, there never was an organised movement with 
 power to attract fresh adherents gladly into its service, 
 but it proceeded from persons and principles from 
 each directly. 
 
 Let us now consider the remaining clauses of the 
 Athanasian Creed. It is declared that 
 
 There is one Person of the Father, another of the Son : 
 and another of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Whatever be the special import of the word " Person " 
 here, the clause reminds us that there is one reality to a 
 principle, another to a human being who believes in it 
 and lives it out, and still a third to a party organised to 
 exemplify and teach it. We also know for it is witnessed 
 in the New Testament that the reality which Jesus called 
 his Father, and with which he identified himself, was some- 
 thing invisible and impalpable to sense ; that his disciples 
 soon began to call him the Son of that reality ; and that 
 they named the animating will of the Church the Holy 
 Ghost. There can be no doubt, therefore, that this clause 
 sums up the consciousness and the experience of the early 
 Christians. Being true to a principle is being true to a 
 reality different in kind from a human being who embodies 
 it ; and, again, being faithful to a party is psychically 
 different from being faithful to a principle or person. 
 We must not confound these realities. 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 163 
 
 In the next clause, however, it is declared that 
 
 The Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy 
 Ghost, is all one : the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal. 
 
 Exactly so in one's experience of Principle, Person 
 and Party their substance is one, and the value of 
 Person is equal to that of Principle ; and in religious 
 experience the majesty of the Church is equally en- 
 during with the dignity of its doctrine and the personal 
 worth of each of its members. Therefore one may 
 continue 
 
 Such as the Father is, such is the Son : and such is the 
 Holy Ghost. 
 
 Nor can anyone take umbrage at the characterisation 
 
 The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate : and the Holy 
 Ghost uncreate. 
 
 Principles, if anything be so, are uncreated, as they 
 constitute the norm or standard regulating all moral 
 constructions, all judgments. Likewise, since human 
 beings become persons not by compulsion of any out- 
 side energy or act, but by intuition and free acceptance 
 of the moral law, persons may very aptly be characterised 
 being autonomous as self-created, which is the same 
 as uncreate. Equally fitting is the epithet " uncreate " 
 to an organised social movement or group. Every 
 society of an ethical nature has a unique element in it, 
 as contrasted with abstract ideas and with individual 
 persons, which cannot be resolved into the one or the 
 other. 
 
 The next six paragraphs are splendidly exact as assertions 
 of the limitations of our knowledge concerning the three 
 
164 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 supreme factors of moral experience, and as characterisa- 
 tions of the most significant features which we can discover 
 in them : 
 
 The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible : 
 and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. 
 
 The Father eternal, the Son eternal : and the Holy 
 Ghost eternal. 
 
 And yet they are not three eternals : but one eternal. 
 
 As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor 
 three uncreated : but one uncreated, and one incompre- 
 hensible. 
 
 So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty : 
 and the Holy Ghost Almighty. 
 
 And yet they are not three Almighties : but one 
 Almighty. 
 
 Probably most readers will confess with me that we do not 
 comprehend the full bearings and nature of moral Principle, 
 Person and Party. Yet if we comprehended one we 
 should comprehend the three ; so they are not three in- 
 comprehensibles, but one. The Athanasian Creed exhibits 
 the only kind of agnosticism which the scientific spirit 
 justifies. We know the three ethical realities, but not 
 in full ; nor do we comprehend their organic inter- 
 dependence. 
 
 The creed then declares that 
 
 The Father is God, the Son is God : and the Holy 
 Ghost is God. 
 
 And yet they are not three Gods : but one God. 
 
 If the word " God " must designate that to which we 
 should steadfastly and devoutly attend in order to receive 
 life's highest blessings, and if by the Persons of the Trinity 
 be meant the radical factors in moral experience, then these 
 two clauses say that equally to be worshipped are the 
 Moral Law, the individual beings and the social groups 
 that embody it. 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 165 
 
 In the same way, the next two clauses assert the supre- 
 macy or lordship of the three factors : 
 
 So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord : and the 
 Holy Ghost Lord. 
 
 And yet not three Lords : but one Lord. 
 
 Then the whole is summed up, without adding any new 
 distinction, in the words : 
 
 For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity : 
 to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and 
 Lord ; 
 
 So we are forbidden by the Catholick Religion : to say, 
 There be three Gods, or three Lords. 
 
 Now a new distinction is presented : 
 
 The Father is made of none : neither created, nor 
 begotten. 
 
 The Son is of the Father alone : not made, nor created, 
 but begotten. 
 
 The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son : 
 neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. 
 
 We often see the coming of a new party into existence, 
 and it always proceeds from persons and ideas. So, too, 
 we often see a human being awakening into personality ; 
 and the awakening always consists in the direct, un- 
 mediated intuition of a principle. And the principle itself 
 it is not dependent for its origin upon any person's 
 authority or any church's dictation. The Father is made 
 of none, neither created nor begotten ; rational character is 
 of the Father alone, while communion is of Father and Son. 
 But each remains unique. Hence the creed says : 
 
 So there is one Father, not three Fathers ; one Son, not 
 three Sons ; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. 
 
1 66 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 And when the disciple is most fully alive to his indebted- 
 ness to all three, he will be jealous of any precedence in 
 reverence and dignity shown to any one of the three ; and 
 he will find this sentiment well expressed in the following 
 clauses : 
 
 And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other : none 
 is greater, or less than another ; 
 
 But the whole three Persons are co-eternal together : 
 and co-equal. 
 
 So that in all things, as is aforesaid : the Unity in 
 Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped. 
 
 He therefore that will be saved : must thus think of the 
 Trinity. 
 
 Before proceeding to the second part of the Athanasian 
 Creed, let me say that I do not for a moment think that 
 its authors had consciously in mind what I have been say- 
 ing about moral factors, and about principle, person and 
 party. On the contrary, I am sure that they did not have 
 in their thought these distinctions and their practical bear- 
 ings. Had they had them, they would undoubtedly have 
 expressed them, for there is no evidence in the Athanasian 
 Creed that those who wrote and sanctioned it were 
 keeping back anything they counted of worth on the 
 fundamental matters which they loved and held to be 
 vital to the Church's mission. But what I do maintain 
 because I cannot escape believing it is that these 
 distinctions which I have specified were actually causing 
 the discriminations they were making. In an earlier 
 chapter I have indicated how it is possible for a man to 
 be animated by a principle, and to illustrate it and be 
 an instance of it to the onlooker, and yet himself not 
 be aware that he is a living embodiment of it. In the 
 religious life, accordingly, those who are disciplined in 
 psychology and in the critical study of social phenomena 
 

 THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 167 
 
 can discover what elements in a man's statements are, on 
 the one hand, poetry or abstract theory, and what, on the 
 other, are verifiable fact. And they may draw out the 
 elements of fact and boldly assert that these constitute the 
 essential meaning and the truth of the man's message. 
 There used to be a time when students of history inter- 
 preted as a mere priestly falsehood or popular myth the 
 statement that St Francis of Assisi had suffered the 
 stigmata of Christ ; but to-day the fact is accepted. It 
 is, however, accounted no supernatural event, but only an 
 instance of the power which a concrete idea in the mind of 
 a devotee can have through his imagination upon his body. 
 But to this subject, which I have already treated, I here 
 turn only for a moment, in order to indicate exactly in 
 what sense I believe that the Athanasian statement of the 
 Trinity is related to the three supreme factors in moral 
 experience. 
 
 In view of the triune reality of the moral life, it is 
 impossible to believe that the creed is here dealing with 
 mere transcendent metaphysical entities, although it may 
 well be conceded that its distinctions, being so radical and 
 so universally valid, must colour any theory as to the 
 relation of thought to being. 
 
 The second half of the Athanasian Creed contains those 
 two points which I have already specified as betraying, 
 in my judgment, a lack of discrimination. For these 
 defects I blame if blame there always must be not the 
 authors of the creed but the human mind itself, or rather 
 the slowness of human destiny in bringing us those ex- 
 periences by reacting against which we gain wisdom. 
 This part of the creed begins : 
 
 furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation : 
 that he also believe rightly the Incarnation of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
1 68 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess : 
 that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and 
 Man ; 
 
 God, of the Substance of the Father, begotten before 
 the worlds : and Man, of the Substance of his Mother, 
 born in the world ; 
 
 Perfect God, and perfect Man : of a reasonable soul 
 and human flesh subsisting ; 
 
 Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead : and 
 inferior to the Father, as touching his Manhood. 
 
 Who although he be God and Man : yet he is not two, 
 but one Christ ; 
 
 One ; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh : 
 but by taking of the Manhood into God ; 
 
 One altogether ; not by confusion of Substance : but 
 by unity of Person. 
 
 There is not here space, else for love of the subject I 
 would ring out all the changes of my interpretation upon 
 each of these clauses. I hope, however, that more than 
 one reader will attempt to do so for himself. 
 
 In the clauses I have just cited there appears the word 
 " Christ," which now the creed takes up and with perfect 
 sureness of touch characterises, in its distinct bearing : 
 
 For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man : so 
 God and Man is one Christ ; 
 
 Who suffered for our salvation. . . . 
 
 The Principle and the Person, neither separable from 
 the other, constitutes the Christ who by suffering redeems 
 others ; and the rest I have already interpreted. 
 
 To me the significance of the statements in this creed 
 is not that they outline factors in the experience of one 
 group of persons called the Church, and in the life of the 
 Founder of the Church ; their significance is that they 
 indicate relationships, tendencies and factors universal 
 in the experience of man, and that they help us to 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 169 
 
 understand our own moral situation, resources and 
 opportunities for advancing the same ultimate cause as 
 that of the Church, whether we pursue it within or 
 outside of the Church, in the name of religion or merely 
 of politics, social reform, art or science. And concerning 
 the second and third Persons of the Trinity the first 
 part of the Athanasian Creed is already universal in its 
 affirmations. 
 
 Undoubtedly those who formulated them were well 
 aware that in the minds of all there would be an under- 
 stood reference and limitation to Jesus as the second 
 Person, and to the animating spirit of the historic 
 Church as the third ; and such reference is justifiable. 
 However much we may rationalise and universalise the 
 truths illustrated in the experience and character of Jesus 
 and of the organisation which grew out of his life, we 
 can never entirely dissever our knowledge of universal 
 ethical principles from the lives and the institutions which 
 first stimulated to the consciousness of them. But the 
 jealous limitation of spiritual indebtedness to Jesus and 
 the Church is unfounded and inexpedient. We should 
 proceed, therefore, to extend the reference of the creed 
 by saying that every person who is good, or even every 
 person in so far as he is good, is an instance and illustra- 
 tion of the second Person of the Trinity. In so doing, 
 we should be simply assuming that Christ is not unique 
 in kind, when compared with other moral personalities. 
 When we, however, thus universalise the doctrine as to 
 the second Person of the Trinity and apply it generally, 
 we do not deny the pre-eminence of Jesus or his 
 historic precedence or the human debt to him. But 
 we do rid the Athanasian Creed of its seeming arbitrari- 
 ness, and we strip it of any seeming offence to the method 
 and spirit of science. 
 
i yo NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 The Apostles* Creed introduces many conceptions not 
 to be found in that called after Athanasius. The first of 
 these is especially significant. The creed opens with a 
 declaration that God is the Maker of heaven and earth. 
 How can it be possible, it may be said, in the face of 
 this declaration, for anyone to assert, as I do, that 
 Christians meant, although unconsciously, by the word 
 "God," not the Creator of the universe but the Good 
 in the world ? For how could it be said that the Good 
 in the world is the Maker of heaven and earth, or stands to 
 the cosmos in any relation analogous to that of a Creator ? 
 
 The notion of the moral ideal with all that favours it 
 may seem at the first glance to have no philosophic signifi- 
 cance whatever ; it cannot lead to theism or pantheism ; it 
 does not seem to throw any light upon the question as to 
 the ultimate reality of things. At most it may be seen 
 to be psychologically of value, and in religion of practical 
 significance. 
 
 But as to its metaphysical importance, let me answer 
 first that the expression " Maker of heaven and earth " is 
 itself, from a philosophic point of view, extremely crude. 
 It is poetry, and may help towards an imaginative picture 
 of the origin of things ; but it is not a conception which 
 makes comprehensible the problem of existence in a 
 general scheme of thought. In the second place, I would 
 call attention to the fact that the greatest philosophers 
 Plato and Kant have held that righteousness, the good 
 will, goodness, and a theory of goodness, are the sole 
 possible basis of a sound metaphysic. Plato and Kant 
 maintained that you can never settle the problems of the 
 relation of thought to being, unless you have a scale of 
 values, and such a scale only the moral judgment 
 furnishes. They say that even the problem of existence 
 can only be solved by understanding the meaning of 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 171 
 
 existence ; and the meaning of existence must be its 
 significance in relation to ultimate human ends. Plato's 
 doctrine of the Good as the ultimate idea is consonant 
 philosophically with the religious conception that the 
 Good is God. Kant's notion that the moral law is the 
 one element of eternity manifest in time is due to his 
 recognition of the Good Will as a key to Reality. 
 
 The new school of philosophy which calls itself 
 Pragmatic or Humanistic likewise teaches a doctrine philo- 
 sophically favourable to the recognition of the Good as 
 God. In other words, goodness is somehow the root of 
 Reality. For Reality itself is becoming more and more 
 resolved into that which is supremely satisfying to the 
 heart and will, as well as to the rational craving for a 
 principle that shall contain no contradiction in itself and 
 that shall cover all the facts and all the interests of life. 
 I would maintain that goodness is not only the supremely 
 valuable thing, and the thing which ought to be 
 worshipped, but that it is the supremely real thing. 
 Nor is it quite absurd philosophically to declare that 
 goodness if we take it to mean the deepest law of the 
 human will is the " Maker of heaven and earth." If 
 heaven and earth mean the universe, and if, as the 
 idealists say, the universe does not exist except as it is 
 perceived ; and if, further, the forms and categories 
 which are the framework of the perceived universe are 
 given to it by the mind itself ; and if the human mind 
 be essentially ethical will ; then, is it folly to say that 
 Goodness is the Maker of heaven and earth ? Without 
 goodness our rationality, or any being's rationality, ceases ; 
 and when rationality ceases, there is no universe unless 
 the idealists be altogether wrong. 
 
 The doctrine that goodness is God is not pantheism, 
 and it may not be theism as ordinarily conceived ; but 
 
172 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 there is a word familiar to all philosophers which does 
 designate well the doctrine that our moral ideals are the 
 ultimate reality of the universe. This word is Mysticism. 
 Ethical mysticism is as old as Oriental philosophy, and as 
 fresh and young as the growing discipleship of Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson. According to it, righteousness is the 
 key to the riddle of the universe. The man who wills 
 aright shall also know of the doctrine. He stands face 
 to face, in himself, with the ultimate reality. I cannot 
 see, therefore, why a man who re-interprets the word 
 " God " in the manner I have suggested, should feel that 
 his truth falls short of what is hinted at in the first 
 utterance of the Apostles* Creed. On the contrary, he 
 must feel that the language of the creed falls short of 
 the philosophic truth which he possesses. 
 
 The points in the second portion of the Apostles* 
 Creed have almost all been touched upon by me in other 
 connections, so that I need dwell only for a moment upon 
 certain of them. Ethically, it is altogether desirable that 
 the creed should be so modified that the reference to the 
 mother of Jesus as a virgin should be dropped. And 
 the statement that Jesus was "conceived by the Holy 
 Ghost " should be so recast as to make it quite clear 
 that what is meant is that Jesus was an incarnation of 
 goodness and was quickened by the Jewish theocracy. 
 
 In the third portion, we notice in the grouping 
 together of the Holy Ghost and the Holy Catholic 
 Church the recognition that the Holy Ghost is the 
 General Will of the Church. There has been much 
 discussion as to what the communion of saints means. 
 The ambiguity in the phrase leaves us the greater liberty 
 to interpret it as we please ; and the interpretation 
 consonant with naturalistic humanism is, of course, the 
 spiritual fellowship of all persons who love and serve 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 173 
 
 their kind. The expression "the forgiveness of sins," 
 like so many others, is not self-illuminating, and there- 
 fore it would seem justifiable for each age and each man, 
 finding any experience which these words fit better than 
 any others, to retain them explaining, of course, the 
 new interpretation given, if there is danger that others 
 might be misled. 
 
 What I have said concerning either the Athanasian 
 or the Apostles* Creed seems to cover every point 
 brought out in the Nicene Creed. 
 
 Two general questions still claim our attention one 
 concerning the Church's use, and the other the intellectual 
 limitation, of the Creeds. 
 
 Even if the Athanasian formula is admitted to be a 
 valuable embodiment of the profoundest wisdom, it 
 should not much less should the Apostles' or the 
 Nicene Creed, each being inferior be repeated at every 
 service every day in the year, as the Apostles' Creed is 
 at present. One good formula for ever reiterated would 
 put the listening world to sleep. If there were a proper 
 teaching to children before their initiation into member- 
 ship of the Church, there would be no occasion that any 
 one of the Creeds should be repeated more than once or 
 twice a month in church. Then it would always come 
 with freshness and be interesting by contrast. The 
 mental law of variety, according to which frequent 
 contrasts are needed in order to sustain the attention, 
 would suggest to the wise ecclesiastical statesman that no 
 formula of faith should ever be repeated more than once 
 a week. Various formulae, presenting various aspects of 
 the one manifold and universal truth, could be introduced. 
 
 This leads me to the second question which needs 
 attention. It has often been noticed that the Creeds 
 make no mention of purely moral ideals. They give no 
 
174 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 indications as to our duties in life : they do not tell what 
 ought to be. They limit themselves to great or presum- 
 ably great events in the history of man and the life of 
 the universe ; or they allude to great principles, which, 
 however, are viewed as abiding facts for instance, when 
 the creed says, " I believe in the forgiveness of sins.'* 
 Here the meaning is not that sins ought to be forgiven, 
 but that, as a fact, under certain conditions they are 
 forgiven. When it is said " I believe in the Holy 
 Ghost," there is again a pointing to an actual centre of 
 energising and redeeming power. The distinctions made 
 so subtly in the Athanasian Creed assume to indicate 
 differences existing in the nature of things and so they 
 do, according to my interpretation. But because the 
 creeds evidently are thus consciously limited to what 
 might be called the metaphysics or even the physics of 
 ethics, that is no reason why there should not be supple- 
 mentary formulae of a more purely ethical nature incor- 
 porated into the Church service. Monotonous reiteration 
 in ritual prevents the adequate presentation of different 
 aspects of thought, duty and spiritual discipline ; but a 
 greater variety of statements from day to day would make 
 it possible to present the fullness of life's meaning. 
 
 Let us now turn to the Articles of Religion. Of all 
 the Prayer Book, they constitute the part least in favour. 
 Happily, nobody wants them to remain as they stand, no 
 one counts them too sacred for revision ; but the weight 
 of judgment seems to be that they should be swept away 
 altogether ; or rather that we need not even trouble to 
 remove them, they being a dead letter already. 
 
 This attitude seems to me entirely wrong. In the first 
 place, the Articles are not dead. They are as much alive 
 as ever they were, and on account of the prestige of age 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 175 
 
 they are more powerful than when, in 1562, under Queen 
 Elizabeth, they were first established authoritatively. 
 Indeed, the one great movement in English religious life 
 during the nineteenth century came to its crisis through 
 a clash with them. It was Tract Ninety of John Henry 
 Newman, on the Thirty-Nine Articles, which reawakened 
 English Protestantism out of an apathy like that of death. 
 What did Newman try to do ? Being Catholic at heart, 
 he had from the first accepted every Romish doctrine 
 except the supremacy of the Pope and the worship of the 
 Virgin. He longed for Anglican reunion with Rome, 
 and, with a subtlety that seemed to many almost diabolical, 
 he searched these Articles of the faith of the Church of 
 England to find a way through them. He took as a clue 
 the advice given in the famous Preface, which was 
 published in 1628, under Charles I. It declares that "No 
 man hereafter shall either print, or preach, to draw the 
 Article aside any way, but shall submit to it in the plain 
 and full meaning thereof : and shall not put his own sense 
 or comment to be the meaning of the Article, but shall take 
 it in the literal and grammatical sense" Said Newman to 
 himself, " I will take these Articles in their literal and 
 grammatical sense, and see whether the words thus taken 
 do really exclude Catholic doctrine." Thus he was able 
 to prove conclusively that the Thirty-Nine Articles were 
 a work of compromise by statesmen who wanted, while 
 preventing England from submitting to Rome, to concili- 
 ate the Romanising party. Newman saw that, while the 
 Articles were established by Protestants, their object was 
 to reconcile and harmonise all the conflicting factions in 
 the nation. He discovered the many verbal loopholes 
 left to enable Romanists to enter the Anglican organisation 
 without maiming their conscience. When the Protestants 
 of Newman's day realised what his subtlety had discovered, 
 
1 76 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 they rose up against him and hounded him out of the 
 Church of England. The Thirty-Nine Articles proved 
 themselves to be more alive than ever. And to this day 
 it is due to their peculiar verbal qualities that the Church 
 of England is able to retain the main body of the 
 Romanising party. But no mortal has to-day dreamed 
 of hoping that the Thirty-Nine Articles could by any 
 possible literalness be so interpreted as to allow all shades of 
 religious opinion now within the nation to be recognised 
 as coming within their meaning. They were not framed 
 to attract Unitarians, Jews, Agnostics, scientific thinkers 
 and social democrats, as well as Romanists and Calvinists. 
 
 In fact, the only way now to appreciate the Thirty-Nine 
 Articles aright is to read them with reference to their 
 historic purpose and achievement ; and to this I shall 
 confine myself, without attempting a criticism of their 
 contents. We must see what function they performed in 
 the evolution of the nation's life during that period which 
 was foreseen by the statesmen who published them. 
 That national function was and is their real essence. 
 Accordingly, to take the exact statements of the separate 
 clauses and judge them in relation to our thought and our 
 needs to-day is mechanical and unhistorical. 
 
 The question is, what part did they play in the economy 
 of the nation's life ? Did they or did they not preserve 
 its idealism and its unity ? And furthermore, in the light 
 of what they did perform for the nation, we must ask 
 what sort of a document would in our day meet the 
 corresponding need of our times. When we ask that 
 question, instead of disregarding or hating these Thirty- 
 Nine Articles, we shall study them respectfully, in order 
 to learn from them how a similar instrument could 
 now perform a like function. 
 
 It seems to me that the more scientific and critical 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 177 
 
 thinkers of our age have altogether erred in their extreme 
 individualism and in their aloofness not only from the 
 Church, but from the national mission of the Church as 
 the ethical teacher of the people. Modern critical and 
 scientific thought will fail of its fruition, unless it 
 culminates in a crystallised statement of the new view 
 of the universe and of the new moral faith that animates 
 us, and seeks a foothold for this in the formulae of the 
 Church. The nation needs a document that shall com- 
 prehend the very best wisdom of our times, in order that 
 the new idealism, the higher liberty and the deeper 
 insight into human destiny, may be brought to every 
 man, woman and child throughout the land, and the 
 land itself may become a light to all the world. 
 
 Now, in the economy of the nation's spiritual life, what 
 was the purpose served by the Thirty-Nine Articles ? 
 It was, as I have already hinted, the drawing of the 
 Roman party into the new national idealism. Many 
 minds had been set free to think, and, although Henry 
 VIII. had not intended it, there was a stirring and 
 quickening in the religious consciousness on every side. 
 The movement of Luther had begun to exercise a mighty 
 influence over the imagination of the people, but especially 
 of the scholars, of England. Before Henry died, he 
 arranged that the authorities of the Church should pro- 
 ceed to a restatement and reformulation of ecclesi- 
 astical law, and ordered the authorities to do this. In 
 the time of Edward VI., with Cranmer as the prime 
 mover, a Commission was appointed, consisting of eight 
 bishops, eight divines, eight lawyers and eight civilians ; 
 and these thirty-two persons met together chiefly under 
 Cranmer to carry out the work. They made forty-two 
 articles. In the time of Mary these were set aside, for 
 during her reign religious differences came to such a heat 
 
 12 
 
178 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 as the country has not known since, and more than three 
 hundred executions for heresy took place. Then Eliza- 
 beth and her advisers saw the necessity of formulating a 
 statement that would assuage bitternesses and put an 
 end to antagonisms. Accordingly, they took up again 
 the work of Cranmer, accepting the greater part of 
 his formulae and modifying them slightly, with the 
 express object of bringing about national religious unity. 
 At that time the cleavage was between the Roman 
 Catholics on the one hand and Protestants of the Lutheran 
 and Calvinistic types on the other. The Articles of 
 Faith came as a healing salve, so to speak, to the 
 nation's wounds. The revisers of the Prayer Book drew 
 material from every available source, if only it would 
 serve this purpose. They not only turned to the rites 
 and ceremonies of the historic Catholic Church, but to the 
 new formulae of Martin Luther. It was in 1517 that he 
 had broken with the Church of Rome. The Emperor 
 Charles V. had requested that there should be a formula- 
 tion of the principles of the Reformation, and such a 
 statement was submitted to him in 1530. From it the 
 revisers of the English Book of Common Prayer appro- 
 priated significant material. They did what they could 
 to reconcile Roman Catholics and at the same time not 
 discourage the new outburst of nationalism. Here, then, 
 were Ridley and Cranmer, Luther and Melanchthon, and 
 even Henry VIII. himself, contributing modifications to 
 the historic rites and ceremonies of the Church, in order 
 to draw all men into national unity. On the whole, the 
 Book of Common Prayer as revised accomplished its 
 purpose ; the Roman Catholics were in great part con- 
 ciliated and the Protestant antagonism ceased to threaten 
 civil strife. 
 
 In this end which they were meant to serve we see the 
 
THE CREEDS AND ARTICLES 179 
 
 real meaning of the Thirty-Nine Articles. That meaning 
 is not without its application to the England of to-day. 
 There is a greater breach in the organic life of the nation 
 as a unit of religion than there was in the time of Henry 
 VIII. or Elizabeth. Although actual strife is not im- 
 minent, the nation is suffering a lamentable waste and 
 weakening of her spiritual energy and physical vitality. 
 Who are now the parties to be drawn into co-operative 
 unity ? In the answer to that question we shall have 
 stated the problem before the nation to-day. 
 
 In order to realise how much the national consciousness 
 has grown and developed since the age of Henry VIII. 
 or Elizabeth, we must remember that these Thirty-Nine 
 Articles were written before Shakespeare and Milton, 
 before Richard Hooker and Jeremy Taylor, before Fox 
 and Wesley. They were written before Francis Bacon 
 had inculcated the method and awakened the spirit of 
 scientific research. They were written before the funda- 
 mental discoveries of modern science before Galileo and 
 Newton by men who had no conception of law and 
 order throughout the phenomena of the physical universe, 
 much less any idea of the law of uniformity as work- 
 ing in human society throughout its growth. There 
 was not then any recognition of the fact of evolution. 
 Furthermore, they were written in the time of absolute 
 monarchy and autocracy. The House of Commons 
 was still as nothing, and the people were comparatively 
 slaves, both economically and politically ; woman was 
 still morally and socially unrecognised as a claimant 
 for just treatment. 
 
 As regards philosophy, the Articles were written before 
 the time of Hobbes, Locke and Hume, before Descartes 
 and Leibnitz, before Kant and Fichte. They date from 
 a time prior to the work of all the great thinkers who are 
 
i8o NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 the leaders and formative spirits of modern life. The 
 breach to-day is not between Anglican and Catholic, but 
 between believers in authority and an outside revelation 
 on the one hand, and, on the other, believers in universal 
 experience and inward intuition. Religion versus science, 
 the most radical of all conflicts, is the civil feud which the 
 Church must heal. The battle is that of originality 
 against unthinking conformity, of patriotism against vested 
 interests. Yet merely to sweep away these Thirty-Nine 
 Articles would be only to remove an instrument which 
 for a past age performed a work that always needs to 
 be done anew with new instruments. There has, how- 
 ever, been no effort to reformulate the nation's faith. 
 The spirit of reciprocal aloofness among those who differ 
 and the policy of isolating antagonistic sections have 
 dominated for generations, and will, if persisted in, 
 postpone for ever the solution of the religious problem. 
 
 The new characteristics of our modern national life have 
 produced conflicting currents of moral sentiment which 
 need harmonisation through judicious formulations of the 
 Church as much as did once questions as to Works of 
 Supererogation, of the Authority of General Councils, 
 of Purgatory, of Communion in both kinds, of the 
 Marriage of Priests, and of the Civil Magistrates. Indeed, 
 much of the space given to these points might now be 
 devoted to living issues, which in all probability will con- 
 tinue to be alive for several centuries. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF HOPE AND DUTY 
 
 WHILE the Creeds of the Church do not present ideals 
 of duty, such are to be found in other portions of its 
 ritual, and are conspicuous in the citations from the Bible 
 most frequently reiterated. Presentations of this order, 
 pointing out the chief ends of life, the main outlines of 
 duty and the methods of right discipline for heart and 
 spirit, are of the utmost importance in any scheme of 
 national education and character-building. 
 
 But religion has stood at a halt for centuries as regards 
 any new discovery of means of quickening to ethical 
 insight, disciplining the moral judgment and stimulating 
 to hope, to responsibility and to moral faith in the 
 immanent sources of individual and national character. 
 Especially have the laity of all countries been kept 
 untrained in anything like a finer and ampler ethical 
 discrimination and in the psychology and sociology of 
 spiritual culture. The reasons for moral faith and hope 
 have not been presented as they would have been if 
 religion had been brought into harmony with modern 
 views of democracy, and with the recognition of the 
 influence of secondary causes in producing the higher 
 life. 
 
 But instead of alluding further to presentations of the 
 
 181 
 
1 82 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 ends and means of religious discipline which, although 
 not analogous to creeds, are needed to supplement them, 
 let me proceed at once to give instances of the kind of 
 confessions I mean. 
 
 Take, for example, repentance. A clear statement in 
 psychological language as to its significance and working 
 in the moral progress of the individual would afford 
 untold strength and consolation to puzzled and groping 
 minds ; yet there is no adequate setting forth of its 
 nature in the Church services. But let us suppose that 
 once a month, or at whatever recurring intervals it might 
 seem best, such a confession as the following were read 
 at Morning and Evening Prayer : 
 
 When a man first fully realises what he is and what he 
 ought to be, he falls into self-condemnation, and feels that 
 the whole universe would be justified in rising up against 
 him. Nor would he oppose it. He will not and dare not 
 desire any consolation or release. He is willing to be 
 unconsoled and unreleased ; he does not grieve over his 
 own sufferings, for they are right in his eyes ; he has 
 nothing to say against them. 
 
 This is what is meant by true repentance. The man 
 who has entered into this hell no one else may console 
 him. 
 
 But the repentant man is by no means in a state of 
 hopelessness ; his spiritual experience is training him not 
 to desire or regard anything but the Right. And since 
 he now neither cares for nor desires anything but the 
 Right and seeks not himself nor his own things, but only 
 to honour the Right, he begins to do good and to be good, 
 and to partake of all manner of interest in life, and to find 
 peace, rest and consolation in active service for the common 
 weal. He is now in a state of inner freedom, inasmuch as 
 he has lost the fear of pain and the hope of reward, and is 
 living in pure submission to the eternal Right, in fervent 
 love of it, humbly recognising that although he may 
 never attain, he may be ever approaching it. A man so 
 living is henceforth, as it were, in heaven. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF HOPE AND DUTY 183 
 
 Through this hell to this heaven is the only way to life. 
 To find this way and to walk therein is the perfection of 
 religious experience. The following of this path invests 
 each moment with infinite worth j it makes a man love 
 all the familiar relations of life and find joy in doing the 
 least duties. Such are the nature and fruits of repentance, 
 as revealed in the experience and under the discipline of 
 pure religion. 
 
 It is also a pity that the daily service does not in- 
 corporate the substance of the two summaries, contained 
 in the Catechism, of duties towards God and towards one's 
 neighbour. It might be wise that, in place of the Apostles' 
 Creed, the minister once a week should read some such 
 modification of them as this : 
 
 It behoves us, when we meet together, to call to mind 
 our duty towards the ideal of righteousness and our duty 
 towards one another. 
 
 Our duty towards the moral ideal is to have faith 
 in it, and to love its dictates with all our heart, 
 with all our mind, with all our soul, and with all our 
 strength. Our duty towards the moral ideal is also to 
 revere it ; to be grateful to all human beings who have 
 taught us to love it j to turn towards it ; to honour every 
 name which stands for it, and to serve the law of righteous- 
 ness all the days of our life. 
 
 Our duty towards our neighbour is to love him as 
 ourself > to honour and succour father and mother, sister 
 and brother ; to respect every man, woman and child of 
 every race and nation, however ungifted or unfortunate ; 
 to do to all men as we would they should do unto us ; and 
 to regard as our neighbour every sentient being whom 
 we might relieve from suffering. It is our duty also to 
 obey, under conscience, the regularly established laws and 
 duly chosen authorities of the nation ; but, likewise under 
 conscience, upon occasion to combine with others to change 
 the laws and to remove public officers ; to abolish privileges 
 and customs which do not serve the common weal, and to 
 perform cheerfully all the tasks of citizenship. It is our 
 
1 84 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 further duty, as far as is compatible with self-respect and 
 independence of moral judgment, to heed those who know 
 more and are better than we, and to order ourselves 
 reverently to all to whom we are spiritually indebted. It 
 is our duty to hurt nobody by word or deed j to be true 
 and just in all our dealings ; to bear no malice nor in- 
 tolerance in our hearts ; to keep our hands from picking 
 and stealing and our tongues from evil speaking, lying 
 and slandering ; to keep our bodies in temperance, sober- 
 ness and chastity ; not to covet nor desire other men's 
 goods, but to learn and labour truly to deserve our own 
 living, and to do our own duty in whatever state of life we 
 may be placed. 
 
 In similar manner, there would be great gain if the con- 
 gregation were to be reminded that, however great any 
 man's intellectual progress may be, he still needs many of 
 the old methods of spiritual discipline which a high 
 development of liberty might tempt him to discard. He 
 may have outgrown many old doctrines, but his spiritual 
 nature and necessities have not changed. Especially is a 
 frank confession of faults beneficial to him. Suppose, 
 then, that occasionally this declaration were read : 
 
 Let us not fall into the folly of imagining that, because 
 we may have discarded supernatural and superhuman 
 sources of strength, we have either lost any of our higher 
 aspirations, or outgrown the need of any real means of help 
 and comfort which have aided the good and wise in all 
 ages. The right ways of renewing moral energy and 
 deepening insight which were open to them are at hand 
 for us. And let us also remember that whatever methods 
 of ethical discipline were necessary for them are required 
 by us. Among these, one is especially to be commended : 
 it is that we sincerely confess our manifold wrong-doings, 
 and the evil which is in our hearts, with a view to amend- 
 ing our ways. We should acknowledge the wrong which 
 we have done, or which, against our higher judgment, we 
 are inwardly plotting to do. We should acknowledge it 
 
CONFESSIONS OF HOPE AND DUTY 185 
 
 first to our own conscious self, then to some trustworthy 
 friend who will benignantly take sides against our lower 
 nature ; and then to the persons wronged, or in danger of 
 being wronged, by us. 
 
 Such confession tends to remove the self-blindness to 
 which we are prone. It also prevents evil propensities 
 from having time and opportunity to grow in secrecy to 
 monstrous strength. It is neither wise nor prudent that 
 we should hide our sins from the chaste eye of conscience 
 or dissemble them before the world. Rather must we 
 hasten to acknowledge them to ourselves, to spiritual 
 friends, and to others concerned, with a morally obedient 
 heart, to the end that we may overcome them, and that 
 we may deserve forgiveness of the same, both from the 
 inward monitor and from all good men. And although we 
 ought at all times to remember our shortcomings, yet 
 ought we chiefly so to do when we meet together in a 
 fellowship the professed aim of which is to help men to 
 love, know and do the right. 
 
 An aspect of the new trend of religious thought and 
 hope would be opened up before the worshippers' vision, 
 if from time to time the priest might declare : 
 
 There have been religions of escape from the human 
 task by ecstatic loss of individual selfhood ; there have also 
 been religions of faith in some power beyond man's spirit 
 and outside of nature's resources, which was to achieve the 
 longed-for end without our exertion. But with us the sense 
 of a task to be done a task set for us in the constitution of 
 our being passes quickly into zeal for doing it, into the 
 happy finding of means to the glorious end of a perfected 
 society, the vision of which transfigures by its own 
 splendour the toil and pain through which it is to be 
 realised. And it is the new mastery over nature, and the 
 hope springing therefrom, that transform religion from its 
 old-time attitude of prayer to personal beings other than man 
 into the new attitude of co-operative effort among men. 
 While we are more conscious than men ever were before 
 of individual weakness, we are surprised and thrilled with 
 the upwelling of mighty spiritual power. Mankind is now 
 
1 86 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 entering upon an era of democratic enlightenment and 
 quickening, due to this new gospel of personal responsibility, 
 of civic endeavour, of creative hope and scientific imagina- 
 tion. This religion is crystallising itself into ever clearer 
 consciousness, and will some day transform into harmony 
 with its own nature all the institutions of society. We 
 open our minds to the spirit of this new hope. 
 
 Or this : 
 
 Ours is the religion of unfaltering hope and trust for all 
 mankind. The material universe is more and more yield- 
 ing up her subtlest and most elusive forces into our hands 
 for the healing of disease and for the unifying of the nations 
 into one community, so that all may think together like 
 one mind, and work to the same end in the spirit of love. 
 Likewise, through the application of the methods of science 
 to the facts of mind and of society, the hitherto unexplored 
 depths of man's inner nature are revealing undreamed-of 
 powers of self-development. 
 
 Ours thus becomes the religion of creative energy, of 
 salvation, spiritual and material, through personal and civic 
 effort. 
 
 There is also reason for reminding congregations that 
 the complexer life of our day brings with it new responsi- 
 bilities, so that the old commandments and the old rules 
 do not cover the entire field of duty. When this thought 
 ought to be brought home to the people, it might be wise 
 for the preacher to say : 
 
 It is well that we honour father and mother, and that 
 we do not steal, or murder, or commit adultery, or bear 
 false witness, or covet what is another's. It is well that 
 we love righteousness with all our heart, and our neighbours 
 as ourselves. But life continually is calling us to new 
 duties, and our righteousness must, outwardly as well 
 as inwardly, exceed that of the Scribes and Pharisees of 
 our day. 
 
 We must combat within ourselves the besetting sins of 
 our age, our nation, our own class and condition. 
 
CONFESSIONS OF HOPE AND DUTY 187 
 
 We must deliberately resist the tidal waves of fashion, the 
 panics of the public mind, the bias of class and sect, and 
 every form of social weakness and fear ; we must forbid 
 ourselves all seeking after popularity and all ambition to 
 appear important ; we must set ourselves not to encourage 
 or to create illusions of the religious fancy, or Utopian 
 dreams of a social life, but to cultivate sobriety of judg- 
 ment, sound hopes and firm resolutions for the advancement 
 of mankind. We must wage war upon false optimism, 
 upon the base hope of happiness coming to us ready-made ; 
 upon the notion of salvation by knowledge alone or by 
 material civilisation alone, or by the merit of another alone. 
 We must tear cynicism and pessimism from our hearts. 
 We must teach justification by moral insight and en- 
 thusiasm. Our age demands of us moral originality, 
 strenuousness of self-regeneration, a spontaneous ranging 
 of ourselves on the side of right in crises when good and 
 evil are most violently opposed to each other. We are to 
 come not only under the dominion of thought, but of the 
 Vision of the Perfect Life and of the Enthusiasm of Social 
 Service. 
 
 In the midst of modern doubt as regards a super- 
 natural world and any cosmic purpose independent of 
 man's, it is most desirable that the people should be 
 reminded that no modern scepticism can touch the 
 foundations of ethical belief ; and the following declara- 
 tion would serve as such a reminder : 
 
 Our age is marked by doubt, perplexity and hesitation ; 
 it is disconcerted by the apparent baselessness of the forms 
 and institutions upon which society has hitherto seemed to 
 rest. The moral law, the fabric of the State, religion 
 itself, appear to be shaken to their foundations. To 
 many, the only choice seems to be either to close one's 
 eyes to the contradictions of the present and seek refuge 
 in the old habits of faith, or to set forward on a new, 
 untried path of revolution and anarchy. 
 
 It is at this stage that recourse is had to Ethics, which 
 opens a new alternative between simple acceptance and 
 
1 88 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 simple rejection of the morality and institutions of the past. 
 Ethics proposes to try to understand them j it asks whence 
 they came and what they mean j it blinks no difficulty 
 which the spirit of scepticism suggests, it ignores no claim 
 which tradition puts forward. 
 
 But it goes its own way regardless of both, with a 
 deeper doubt than scepticism, because it doubts the con- 
 clusions of scepticism, and a deeper faith than tradi- 
 tionalism, because it believes in the reason which traditions 
 embody, and which is the source of what power they still 
 possess. 
 
 Again, there is nothing in the regular services to in- 
 dicate to the people the line of the upward evolution of 
 religion from primitive nature-worship to reverence for 
 the moral ideal. But a short statement like the following 
 would indicate this trend : 
 
 The realisation of the ethical ideal on earth is the goal 
 towards which religion always moves when allowed free 
 development. Wrapt as it may be in ritual and dogma, 
 steeped in superstition, entranced in mysticism, bent on 
 comprehending the infinite, it yet tends inherently to 
 divest itself of all else, and to become purely a system of 
 social redemption by man through natural means. What- 
 ever its starting-point, its destination is to become ethical 
 and scientific. At first, energy is spent in propitiating 
 personal agencies other than man, in seeking salvation for 
 self alone, in preparing for another world, or in adoring 
 the Creator. Gradually these interests become dimmer, 
 while the ethical ideal slowly but steadily rises out of 
 human experience, enveloping and transfiguring man and 
 the universe with its own radiance. 
 
 Devotion to the ethical ideal is the final outcome of 
 the religions of the past. It is the beginning and will be 
 the consummation of the religion of the future. We 
 declare that nothing is holier, nothing higher, nothing 
 more sublime, nothing more real than moral goodness in 
 thought, word and deed. We acknowledge human virtue 
 to be the chief factor in life. We accept as permissible 
 that only which does not violate the ethical standard ; 
 

 CONFESSIONS OF HOPE AND DUTY 189 
 
 whatever offends against that must be condemned and 
 rejected. While appreciating other spheres of life, such 
 as science, art and happiness, and while striving to take a 
 sane and broad view, we single out for supreme reverence 
 the Moral Ideal, as the regulative principle of life. 
 
 It is also important that side by side with the " I be- 
 lieve " of the old Creeds should be presented occasionally 
 a " we believe," wherein not the metaphysic but the 
 concrete vision and ideal goal of moral effort should be 
 indicated. Such a forward-looking gaze characterises 
 this declaration of ethical faith : 
 
 We believe in a Religion and in a Church based on 
 moral science. We believe in the power of united human 
 effort to transform this earth into a world where love, 
 justice, health and happiness shall dwell. We believe that 
 moral fellowship is life, and absence of it death. We 
 believe in a creed of deed, which scorns vain thoughts and 
 empty hours, and rejoices in translating love and wisdom 
 into action. We believe in respecting men, women and 
 children of every race. We believe in reverently studying 
 the whole animate and the whole inanimate world, the 
 past and the present, to the end that through the laws of 
 life and of the universe we may mould the future of man- 
 kind into the likeness of the civic ideal. We believe in 
 applying an ethical standard to the family, to one's pro- 
 fession, to social intercourse, to the city and to the State. 
 We believe in granting women equal opportunities with 
 men. We believe in championing the cause of the poor 
 and the oppressed, and in removing every privilege not 
 based on individual ability and not required by the welfare 
 of the community. We believe in arbitration and federa- 
 tion, and we look upon war, even when righteous, as a 
 necessary evil, destined to be abolished. We believe in 
 testing every human interest by these questions : Will 
 it serve the commonwealth ? Is it true ? Is it beautiful ? 
 Is it good ? 
 
 Nor do the Church services at present give expression 
 to the scientific conception of the universe. The new 
 
1 90 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 knowledge of the uniformity of nature furnishes a basis 
 for new hopes, bolder than ever before, for the sure and 
 quick establishing of a kingdom of righteousness. Why- 
 then should not the priest be allowed occasionally to say 
 in church : 
 
 We have come to look upon the Present as the child of 
 the Past and the parent of the Future ; and as we have 
 excluded chance from a place in the universe, so we 
 ignore, even as a possibility, the notion of any interference 
 with the order of nature. Whatever may be men's specu- 
 lative doctrines, it is quite certain that every intelligent 
 person guides his life and risks his fortune upon the belief 
 that the order of nature is constant, and that the chain of 
 natural causation is never broken. 
 
 To bring on the triumph of intellect over mechanism, 
 of responsible morality over irresponsible force, is our 
 mission. 
 
 If we think things cannot be different from what they 
 are, we but add so much to the dead inertia of the world, 
 which keeps them as they are - 9 while if we will not 
 succumb we may form part of the very forces that will 
 help to make things different. 
 
 We may win more and more all Might to the side of 
 Right. Thus Morality ceases to be a private aftair, and 
 becomes cosmic. Morality may some day mean : the 
 universe under the guidance of our unselfish love. 
 
 Here is another statement of ethical faith and ethical 
 prophecy which might prove helpful : 
 
 We believe in finding our reward in doing what is 
 right. We believe that social considerations should deter- 
 mine the limits beyond which natural propensities may not 
 be exercised, and the conditions under which appetites may 
 not be gratified. We believe in progress towards universal 
 health, wealth, intelligence and goodness, and in not clinging 
 to ancient institutions and ideas unless they can justify 
 themselves in advancing the interests of all. We believe 
 in a Democracy healthy, intelligent, temperate, courageous, 
 
CONFESSIONS OF HOPE AND DUTY 191 
 
 and pledged to reform and perfect the State. We believe 
 in thoroughly educating all the young, both for the higher 
 life and for civic efficiency, and in continuing our own 
 mental training throughout our lives. We believe in 
 light, recreation, exercise, cleanliness, fresh air and 
 beautiful surroundings for everybody. We believe in 
 a life of simplicity and of usefulness. We believe in 
 taking up the cause of Righteousness, and purging 
 ourselves and the State of all anti-social influences. We 
 believe in actively resisting injustice ; and we would 
 join with all those who believe with us in fighting the 
 good fight. 
 
 Perhaps to no other duty has the Church so signally 
 failed to train the people as to intellectual honesty. This 
 deficiency in her instruction might be remedied by some 
 statement like the following, to be said once every month 
 by the priest : 
 
 The most original and one of the most profoundly 
 moral sentiments of our age, is that by virtue of which 
 every act of faith is considered as a serious thing, which 
 should not be lightly undertaken ; an engagement more 
 solemn than any other human engagement into which we 
 do not enter without deliberation. 
 
 Belief, that sacred faculty which prompts the decisions 
 of our will and knits into harmonious working all the 
 compacted energies of our being, is ours not for ourselves 
 but for humanity. It is rightly used on truths which 
 have been established by long experience and waiting toil, 
 and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless 
 questioning. Then it helps to bind men together, and 
 to strengthen and direct their common action. It is dese- 
 crated when given to unproved and unquestioned state- 
 ments for the solace and private pleasure of the believer ; 
 to add a tinsel splendour to the plain, straight road of 
 our life, and display a bright mirage beyond it j or even 
 to drown the common sorrows of our kind by a self- 
 deception which allows them not only to cast down but 
 also to degrade us. 
 
1 92 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Nor ought the Church to lose an opportunity or fail 
 to make one for expressing the fine stoic spirit of the 
 following : 
 
 Men say we are born selfish, avaricious and lustful, 
 and cannot be otherwise. We can be ! And the first 
 thing is to feel in our heart of hearts that we ought to be 
 and the iron weight of that obligation will transform us 
 and give us its iron strength. Thou sayest : "But I feel 
 that this appetite is natural to me, and therefore the 
 gratification of it can be no sin." The inordinate, violent, 
 unruly appetite is no otherwise natural to thee than a 
 leprosy is to a leprous generation. And wilt thou love 
 thy disease because it is natural ? It is no otherwise 
 natural than it is to be malicious or revengeful, and to 
 disobey thy governors and abuse thy neighbours ; and 
 yet I think they will not judge thee innocent for rebellion 
 or abuse because it is natural to thee. Though the 
 appetite be natural, is not reason to rule thee as natural to 
 thee ? And is not the subjection of the appetite to reason 
 natural ? If it be not, thou hast lost the nature of man 
 and art metamorphosed into the nature of a beast. 
 
 Let it not be in any man's power to say truly of thee 
 that thou art not simple, or that thou art not good ; but 
 let him be a liar whoever shall think anything of this kind 
 about thee ; and this is altogether in thy power. For 
 who is he that shall hinder thee from being good and 
 simple ? Wipe out thy vain fancies by often saying to 
 thyself : " Now it is in my power to let no badness be 
 in this soul, nor desire, nor any perturbation at all ! " 
 Remember this power which thou hast from nature. 
 
 The faith born of ethics is that man can do the right. 
 The imperative itself brings the power to meet it. There 
 is no duty if I cannot perform it. And as duty exists and 
 binds and charms me, I know I can do it. 
 
 The Church has also in another way inadvertently 
 failed as a moral inspirer and guide. Although she has not 
 intended a shifting of the responsibility for the redemption 
 of the world from the shoulders of living men and women, 
 
CONFESSIONS OF HOPE AND DUTY 193 
 
 such has undoubtedly been an actual result of preaching 
 that the salvation of the world was fully wrought by 
 Jesus Christ and by him alone. It is not true that 
 anyone has been saved by him alone. It would therefore 
 be a gain, now and then, for the priest to say : 
 
 Be assured that if thou failest, none other not nature, 
 nor man, nor angel, nor Creator will render the service 
 or bestow the love due from thee. According to thine 
 opportunity thou must be the strength of the weak, the 
 refuge of the sorrowful. Thou must have compassion 
 on those within thy reach who are worn with toil ; thou 
 must defend and cherish the young, bless and support the 
 aged ; welcome strangers who come thy way ; comfort 
 those who are distressed in body or mind j extend 
 thy mercy to the oppressed, and especially to those who 
 sufFer injustice or are persecuted for righteousness' sake. 
 By strength of character thou art to help in saving the 
 vicious. And by the sweet mystery of love it will be thy 
 privilege to soothe into peace the spirit of the dying. All 
 this thou must be and do. Thy deficiencies and im- 
 perfections offer no ground for exemption, for they will 
 themselves be overcome and dissolved in the redemptive 
 work that waits for thee. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 OPENING SENTENCES AND BENEDICTION 
 
 IN gatherings of a non-religious nature, like those of 
 political parties, scientific societies, or shareholders in a 
 company, it is customary for someone to open the pro- 
 ceedings by declaring the object of the meeting. For the 
 same reasons such a custom is equally appropriate in a 
 church service, and has been in vogue in the Church of 
 England since the Reformation. Those present are first re- 
 minded of the spirit and supreme purpose of the assembling, 
 lest the careless, distracted and ignorant should lose sight 
 of it and sacrifice it to narrower and pettier aims. 
 
 In studying the opening sentences which the Anglican 
 Church has adopted, one is struck by their purely ethical 
 character. This is the more astonishing when one 
 remembers how doctrinal the Church was at the time 
 they were introduced. Here is further evidence that 
 the Church of England is in reality an ethical society ; 
 for the keynote of Morning and Evening Prayer struck 
 in these sentences is ethical, not metaphysical. 
 
 The first in the sequence of sentences, from which the 
 minister is to choose one or more, is : 
 
 When the wicked man turneth away from his wicked- 
 ness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is law- 
 ful and right, he shall save his soul alive. Ez-EK. xviii. 27. 
 194 
 
OPENING SENTENCES & BENEDICTION 195 
 
 And the second : 
 
 I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever 
 before me. Ps. li. 3. 
 
 Then follow : 
 
 Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine 
 iniquities. Ps. li. 9. 
 
 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit : a broken and 
 a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Ps. li. 17. 
 
 Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto 
 the Lord your God ; for he is gracious and merciful, slow 
 to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the 
 evil. JOEL ii. 13. 
 
 To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenesses, 
 though we have rebelled against him : neither have we 
 obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his laws 
 which he set before us. DAN. ix. 9-10. 
 
 Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine 
 anger, lest thou bring me to nothing. JER. x. 24, 
 Ps. vi. i. 
 
 Repent ye ; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 
 MATT. iii. 2. 
 
 1 will arise, and go to my father, and will say unto him, 
 Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and 
 am no more worthy to be called thy son. LUKE xv. 18-19. 
 
 Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord ; for 
 in thy sight shall no man living be justified. Ps. cxliii. 2. 
 
 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and 
 the truth is not in us ; but if we confess our sins, he is 
 faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us 
 from all unrighteousness. I JOHN i. 8-9. 
 
196 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Upon a humanistic interpretation of the word " God," 
 all of these opening sentences become appropriate in a 
 naturalistic church service, and might therefore remain 
 unchanged. But they are far from adequate. They 
 consist of nothing but a personal confession of moral 
 obliquity and of faith in God, without indicating what 
 factor in human experience the word God covers. There 
 is no expression among them of the sense of personal 
 moral responsibility, of the innate desire to fulfil one's 
 duty, or of the consciousness of the inner power to do 
 what is right. There is no hint of the hope that we 
 human beings can bring about social justice on earth, and 
 obliterate almost all the pain and anguish which detract 
 from the worth of life. There is no indication of the 
 moral solidarity of man, of religion as the idealism of a 
 nation, and of the spiritual joy which floods the heart 
 that has surrendered itself to the service of society. 
 There is also a total omission of the intellectual side of 
 duty. From henceforth the Church must emphasise 
 intellectual honesty, the sinfulness of over-credulity, and 
 the duty of thinking for oneself. When trust is turned 
 from supernatural agents to the power of human fore- 
 thought and insight, the new direction must be indicated. 
 Religion to-day both its inspiration and aspiration is 
 by no means exhausted by a confession of personal sin 
 and personal dependence upon a power outside of the 
 individual's own character. A great part of it is the 
 message to every man that he has within himself far more 
 power to stand erect and act aright than he imagines, and 
 than the religions of the past have declared. Some of the 
 opening sentences of the service ought to reflect these 
 main lines of the idealistic ends, hopes and tendencies of 
 humanity. 
 
 One such trend of development has for centuries been, 
 
OPENING SENTENCES & BENEDICTION 197 
 
 and will perhaps be for centuries more, a piercing through 
 the symbols of religion to the ideals they signify. In 
 order to express and thereby to strengthen this beneficent 
 tendency, it would be well if the priest were permitted, 
 when he saw fit, to open Morning and Evening Prayer with 
 these words from Emerson : 
 
 Attach thyself not to the Christian symbol, but to the 
 moral sentiment, which carries innumerable Christianities, 
 humanities and divinities in its bosom. 
 
 Or these words from Constance Naden : 
 
 He who, losing one ideal, refuses to give his heart and 
 soul to another and a nobler, is like a man who declines to 
 build a house on the rock, because the wind and rain have 
 ruined his house on the sand. 
 
 Inherent in the daring spirit which will discard symbol 
 for inner sentiment and dead tradition for living vision 
 is a readiness to stand alone, a loyalty to conviction, which 
 could be communicated to a congregation by these words 
 from Professor Clifford : 
 
 Infidelity does not consist in disbelieving ; it consists in 
 professing to believe what one does not believe. 
 
 Or in this perfectly poised utterance of Emerson : 
 
 It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion ; 
 it is easy in solitude to live after one's own ; but the great 
 man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect 
 sweetness the independence of solitude. 
 
 Other sentences should magnify and glorify Duty as 
 the supreme deity of the human will : 
 
 There is a shrine at which all who love the light rather 
 than the darkness must ever bow. Be they men or gods, 
 they must revere the Moral Ideal. Because of its presence 
 in and among us we have gathered here to-day. Because 
 of its claim upon us we would cast out everything that 
 offends. 
 
198 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 A like effect would be produced by these telling words 
 from Dr Martineau : 
 
 The sense of Duty is to our humanity what gravitation 
 is to the physical universe ; and the solid natures in which 
 it masses itself restrain whatever is erratic, and discipline 
 dependent minds to orderly movement. 
 
 The same high theme resounds through Wordsworth's 
 lines : 
 
 Possessions vanish and opinions change, 
 
 And passions hold a fluctuating seat ; 
 
 But by the storms of circumstance unshaken, 
 
 And subject neither to eclipse nor wane, 
 
 Duty exists. 
 
 And again in Emerson's words : 
 
 Every man takes care that his neighbour shall not cheat 
 him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he 
 do not cheat his neighbour. Then all goes well. He has 
 changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun. 
 
 And through these verses (each of which could be used 
 by itself) from Mr Zangwill's poem " Jehovah " : 
 
 I sing the uplift and the upwelling, 
 
 I sing the yearning towards the sun, 
 
 And the blind sea that lifts white hands of prayer. 
 
 I sing the wild battle-cry of warriors 
 
 And 
 
 The dear word of the hearth and the altar, 
 Aspiration, Inspiration, Compensation, 
 
 God! 
 
 Come into the circle of Love and Justice, 
 Come into the brotherhood of Pity, 
 Of Holiness and Health ! 
 
 Save thy soul from sandy barrenness, 
 
 Let it blossom with roses and gleam with the living waters. 
 
OPENING SENTENCES & BENEDICTION 199 
 
 Come, and ye shall know Peace and Joy, 
 
 Let what ye desire of the Universe penetrate you, 
 
 Let Loving-kindness and Mercy pass through you, 
 
 And Truth be the Law of your mouth. 
 
 For so ye are channels of the divine sea, 
 
 Which may not flood the earth but only steal in 
 
 Through rifts in your souls. 
 
 The same idea informs the following sentence of 
 M. Sabatier : 
 
 The spirit of the old religion placed God outside of the 
 world, sovereignty outside of the people, authority outside 
 of conscience j the spirit of the new age has the opposite 
 tendency j it does not deny God nor sovereignty nor 
 authority, but it sees them where they really are. 
 
 Strength and peace of soul would come to the hearers, 
 whenever the priest opened the service with these words 
 of Professor Felix Adler : 
 
 The world is to be interpreted in terms of joy, but of a 
 joy that includes all its pain includes it and transforms it 
 and transcends it. The Light of the World is a light that 
 is saturated with the darkness which it has overcome and 
 transfigured. 
 
 The sense of man's divine nature and task would be 
 well conveyed by these noble lines of Coleridge : 
 
 From the soul itself must issue forth 
 A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud 
 
 Enveloping the earth 
 And from the soul itself must there be sent 
 A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, 
 Of all sweet sounds the life and element. 
 
 The idea that, despite dogmatic differences, all persons 
 who love righteousness are working in organic harmony 
 for the advancement of the cause of the good, should 
 
200 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 sometimes be given utterance. This would be done 
 whenever the priest were to say, for instance: 
 
 Let us remember that wherever men and women at 
 this hour are seeking above all else to cultivate purity of 
 heart and strenuousness in well-doing, they and we, what- 
 ever our differences, are of one spiritual fellowship. 
 
 Or if he said : 
 
 We share the consciousness that has given to all religious 
 teaching whatever value it possesses the consciousness of 
 the supreme worth of moral goodness. For its sake we 
 would rescue religion from traditions and dogmas which 
 obscure the meaning of righteousness and hide from man- 
 kind its claim to their devotion. 
 
 The rightful supremacy of moral intuition could again 
 be well asserted in these profound and intimate words 
 from Emerson : 
 
 The decisive incidents of our life are found in some 
 unexpected deed or word of our own or another's, which 
 flashes new light upon our entire manner of life, and 
 says, " Thus hast thou done, but it were better thus " ; 
 and all our after-years, like menials, serve and wait on this, 
 and execute its will. 
 
 The distinctively social nature of virtue and duty needs 
 to be from time to time brought before the congregation 
 as one of the eternal features of righteousness. Sentences 
 like the following would accomplish this end : 
 
 He who has dedicated his mind to virtue and to the 
 good of human society, whereof he is a member, has begun 
 all that is either profitable or necessary for him to know or 
 to do towards the establishment of his peace. 
 
 Sometimes a homely statement, directly reminding the 
 members of the church why they have come together, 
 
OPENING SENTENCES & BENEDICTION 201 
 
 creates immediately the right spiritual atmosphere in a 
 religious meeting. This would be the effect were the 
 priest to say : 
 
 The presence of a number of human beings united in 
 devotion to the higher life is an inspiration and unspeakable 
 assurance to each. For it reminds us that the law of 
 righteousness is no mere private concern and no invention 
 of any man's, but has been impressed into our very being 
 from the beginning of human existence by every act of 
 social life, until it has in fact become the inmost nature of 
 us all. 
 
 Or 
 
 We have assembled to give voice to our higher hopes 
 and deeper needs, to point out the human wrongs that 
 must be righted, to acknowledge our indebtedness to the 
 good and just from whom we have received benefits, to 
 hear the words of the wise, and to render homage to the 
 ideals of love, truth and beauty. 
 
 Or 
 
 Let none who are here present remain mere critics or 
 spectators. Let us all be communicants in the moral life 
 of this meeting, entering into its devotion with a spirit of 
 comradeship, with a becoming sense of our several needs, 
 and with reverence for the ideal of human character. 
 
 Or 
 
 We have assembled at this hour because to us the 
 thought of a holy church universal is more than an idle 
 fancy. It is a gleam of what ought to be, a summons to 
 us out of the heart of man, bidding us build the City of 
 the Light. 
 
 This hope of a church universal ought never to be 
 left for long unuttered. It would be stimulated, if 
 occasionally the church service should open with such 
 words as these : 
 
 We look for a church universal, into which all the 
 religious communions of the past will merge, and wherein 
 
202 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 each will find its meaning and its hope fulfilled. Into this 
 church everyone will be welcomed who acknowledges the 
 bond of brotherly love. 
 
 If the sermon to be preached is to bear upon the 
 question of temptation, it would be well that the 
 immortal sentence from Thomas a Kempis, depicting the 
 gradual entrance of sin into the soul, were uttered : 
 
 First there cometh to the mind a bare thought, then a 
 strong imagination of evil, then a delight thereof, and an 
 evil motion, and then consent ; and so by little and little 
 our wicked enemy getteth complete entrance, whilst he is 
 not resisted at the beginning. 
 
 It is advisable also that occasionally a confession of 
 moral frailty should be followed closely by a statement 
 of the means of inward strengthening, as is expressed 
 here : 
 
 We are prone to fall into evil ways, and to sin against 
 the light that is in us. But good reason have we to hope, 
 not only for ourselves but for all mankind. For we have 
 found the way of life. We turn direct to the vision of the 
 Perfect, which is our better self, and to fellowship with 
 others in devotion to the good, which is the source of 
 moral strength. 
 
 Allied in spirit is the following cry for help, suggested 
 by the well-known passage from Sophocles : 
 
 O that our lot might lead us in the path of holy 
 innocence of thought and deed, the path which august 
 laws ordain ; laws which in our deepest nature had their 
 birth, neither did the race of mortal men beget them, nor 
 shall oblivion ever put them to sleep. 
 
 There would be inspiration in the words : 
 
 If we be filled with the love of love, the hate of hate, the 
 scorn of scorn, we shall become a part of the light which 
 shineth more and more unto the perfect day. 
 
OPENING SENTENCES & BENEDICTION 203 
 
 There would be iron strength for character in the 
 sentence : 
 
 The assurance that we live under a reign of natural law 
 enforces upon us with a solemn joy and an abiding fear the 
 truth that what a man soweth that shall someone some time 
 reap. 
 
 In the sentences authorised by the Church, and also 
 in those which I have here submitted, there is no 
 recognition of the minor, the less sublime but none the 
 less profound and tragic needs of the human heart. 
 These needs have a claim upon the attention of the 
 teachers and preachers of the nation. A chief charm in 
 the genius of Robert Louis Stevenson was his appreciation 
 of such less martial virtues and ambitions ; and a superbly 
 beautiful prayer by him might be incorporated as an 
 opening sentence into the ritual of the Church, in this 
 form : 
 
 We need strength to forbear and persevere ; 
 
 We need courage and gaiety and the quiet mind ; 
 
 We want our friends to be spared to us, and our enemies to 
 
 be softened towards us ; 
 We crave success, if it be possible, in all our innocent 
 
 endeavours j 
 If it be not possible, we desire the strength to encounter 
 
 that which is to come ; 
 That we may be brave in peril, 
 Constant in tribulation, 
 Temperate in wrath, 
 And in all changes of fortune, 
 And down to the gates of Death, 
 Loyal and loving 
 To one another. 
 
 The reasons for the adoption of opening words make 
 it natural also to close a church meeting similarly with a 
 brief statement of its spirit and aims. 
 
204 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 It cannot be brought as an objection against closing 
 words in a naturalistic religious rite that they are a weak 
 or, for that matter, a strong imitation of the super- 
 naturalistic benediction with which the present Church 
 service ends. In the first place, it remains to be proved 
 whether the old benediction is supernaturalistic ; in the 
 second, even if it is so, it is at the same time, and in 
 spite thereof, a perfectly natural means towards a perfectly 
 definite practical end. Concealed in the forms of faith 
 in supernatural agencies there has often been an astonish- 
 ing amount of ethical and naturalistic worship, as well as 
 of common sense and shrewd appropriation of very 
 evident secondary causes. The benediction, even if it is 
 a calling down of the power of invisible agencies, is also 
 a bringing of the meeting to an end by summarising its 
 humanistic meaning. 
 
 But is the benediction, is the last verse of the I3th 
 chapter of 2 Corinthians, supernaturalistic ? Was it so 
 meant by the writer ? If one approaches the statement 
 as one would if it were found in a book not dogmatically 
 declared to be essentially spiritistic, one clearly sees that 
 the writer of Corinthians was a man with deep insight 
 into the workings of the human heart, and of the law of 
 cause and effect as it operates in the development of 
 character. His immediately preceding sentences are 
 these : " Therefore I write these things being absent, 
 lest being present I should use sharpness, according to 
 the power which the Lord hath given me to edification, 
 and not to destruction. Finally, brethren, farewell. Be 
 perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in 
 peace ; and the God of love and peace shall be with you. 
 Greet one another with an holy kiss. All the saints 
 salute you.'* And then follow the words from which the 
 benediction is adapted : "The grace of the Lord Jesus 
 
OPENING SENTENCES & BENEDICTION 205 
 
 Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the 
 Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen." 
 
 Observe the logical sequence in the injunction and 
 promise contained in the preceding verse : " Be perfect, 
 be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace ; and 
 the God of love and peace shall be with you." Who can 
 escape the meaning ? It is not said, " The God of peace 
 be with you, and you shall be perfect." The God of 
 peace is not presented as an extraneous cause of perfection ; 
 but being perfect is assigned as the cause of the inherent 
 presence of the God of peace. It is said : If you are 
 perfect, if you are of one mind, if you live in peace, then 
 the beneficent influences and effects, the blessed powers 
 which are inherent in being perfect, in one-mindedness, and 
 in peace, will manifest themselves in your mind and in your 
 life. The God of love and peace is the potency latent in 
 love and peace, is the delivering, redeeming power which 
 becomes active wherever the attributes in which it inheres 
 are at hand. 
 
 Such also are the rigorous logic and the profound 
 experience underlying the benediction. The friendship, 
 the teaching, and the example of Jesus Christ are an im- 
 mediate blessing to all who study the Gospel narrative, 
 even although they do not believe that such a character 
 ever actually existed. This benefit any priest of a natural- 
 istic church, although he be no believer in the supernatural 
 office of Christ, and even no believer in the authenticity 
 of the record of Christ's life as a fact of history, may still 
 strenuously desire to see bestowed upon every member 
 of his Church. Such a one, therefore, would naturally 
 in his heart pronounce this first blessing of the bene- 
 diction, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with 
 you." Likewise with the second blessing the " love of 
 God." The operations and effects of all the morally 
 
206 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 beneficent influences in the world are the operations and 
 effects of love. Nay, they are love itself stored up and 
 waiting to be dispensed. If God be all the good in the 
 world, then God's love is the encircling love in the world, 
 alert to bless anyone who craves and seeks it. And the 
 third blessing, the " communion of the Holy Ghost," is 
 that fellowship with the organic social spirit of which a 
 man becomes conscious when he is inspired by the General 
 Will of a group of human beings working together for 
 the common good. 
 
 Therefore, as regards the benediction to sum up 
 what I have said it is not necessary to discard it or 
 modify it, in ridding Morning or Evening Prayer of 
 every trace of spiritism. It only needs an understanding, 
 on the part of the congregation assembled, that the Holy 
 Ghost still means as it denoted at first the General 
 Will of an Ethical Fellowship, that the love of God is 
 the love latent but potent in the accumulated wisdom and 
 beneficence of mankind, and that the grace of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ is the quickening engendered by the very 
 thought of such a character as he is depicted to have been. 
 
 The beauty and value of this interpretation is that, so 
 far as it goes, it is beyond all controversy true and right. 
 Even those who believe in Christian spiritism believe it 
 also. They simply add spiritism to the ethical realism 
 upon which I have been insisting. 
 
 Although the benediction as it stands is not essentially 
 supernaturalistic, nevertheless it is not adequately uni- 
 versal. The references to the love of God and the 
 communion of the Holy Ghost are comprehensive and 
 general, and therefore will stand for all time and for all 
 varieties of national circumstance unchanged. But " the 
 grace of our Lord Jesus Christ " is only a particular 
 instance of a universal spiritual grace which every noble 
 
OPENING SENTENCES & BENEDICTION 207 
 
 life dispenses. Wherever there has been a wise and good 
 man, in proportion as he has been wise and good and 
 has been felt to be so, just such grace has emanated 
 from him as did from the Lord Jesus Christ. The 
 universal experience, of which the influence of Jesus is 
 an instance, is simply this : that individual persons who 
 are good become primary and creative centres of spiritual 
 life to all who are drawn into intimate contact with them. 
 I am unable to formulate any adequate phrase which for 
 a moment could stand comparison with the expression 
 " The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ," and yet I would 
 like to see universalised what this expression particularises. 
 To say " The grace of Humanity " seems feeble in com- 
 parison ; it would need poetic genius to embody the new 
 idea in language worthy of it. But because the fitting 
 phrase is lacking, we cannot justify ourselves in omitting 
 to communicate this universal principle ; for every year 
 of human history demonstrates more clearly that Christ's 
 is not the only redeeming personality, and that it is vain 
 to hope that the followers of Buddha, Zoroaster and 
 Confucius will ever prostrate themselves in exclusive 
 and jealous loyalty before the founder of Christianity. 
 It is unreasonable to cling to the uniqueness of the moral 
 influence of Jesus ; therefore the Church's benediction, 
 while naught can be said against it on the score of its 
 being tainted with spiritism, is defective on account of 
 its provincial emphasis of his redemptive work. On 
 occasions, however, when attention was being naturally 
 and legitimately drawn to mankind's special debt to 
 him, the present form of benediction would be pre- 
 eminently fitting. 
 
 The chief value and beauty of our interpretation of 
 the benediction is that, to thousands to whom the words 
 have meant less than nothing, it renders them not only 
 
208 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 convincing to reason and the moral judgment, but in- 
 spiring. It has been my experience, now for twenty 
 years, that one of the surest ways of drawing devout but 
 puzzled Christians back into the Church is to reveal to 
 them that, besides the old spiritistic meaning which was 
 read into the Church's words, there is this other signifi- 
 cance latent in them, tender in its humanity and healing 
 in its message. Such has been the chief work of ethical 
 societies to reveal the natural and human value of what 
 supernaturalists had jealously asserted to mean something 
 quite different, and thus to reconcile Christians to the 
 Church. This also was the great mission of Sir John 
 Seeley's Ecce Homo. The natural and human side of 
 Christ had been concealed from millions of people for 
 ages ; but to-day there are at least thousands of Christians 
 in England and America who only temporarily tolerate 
 the supernaturalism still rampant, because of the under- 
 lying humanism, which has been all the time quietly 
 doing whatever good had been credited to supernatural 
 intelligences. 
 
 The renewing of loyalty to the Church due to the new 
 revelation of this humane naturalism in Christianity is, 
 however, by no means a supporting and strengthening of 
 the obsolete elements of established religion. It is instead 
 a replacing of the inanimate and petrified tissue of con- 
 ventionalism, authority and supernaturalism with the 
 living and growing substance of fresh moral insight and 
 enthusiasm. By this process the whole Church will 
 ultimately be transformed, and every vestige of unverifi- 
 able dogma will be discarded. 
 
 Let the churches go on communicating " the grace of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship 
 of the Holy Ghost." The outward continuity of verbal 
 form, instead of retarding in the slightest degree, will 
 
OPENING SENTENCES & BENEDICTION 209 
 
 rather hasten the downfall of spiritism and the triumph 
 of Jesus Christ as one servant of Humanity under 
 natural law. 
 
 A benediction, as such, prescribed by a church, is in 
 truth no more supernaturalistic than are the words with 
 which the chairman of any political or commercial assembly 
 declares the meeting ended. It differs from these only as 
 an assembly met in devotion to ideal ends differs from 
 one convened to advance mere material welfare. Equally 
 capable of spiritistic interpretation also are the words " The 
 meeting is now closed," pronounced by the chairman of 
 a railway company ; for, when all is said and done, who 
 knows whether disembodied intelligences may not be 
 manipulating stocks and controlling the wills of railway 
 magnates ? 
 
 To prevent my seeming to imply that there is any 
 absolute necessity for retaining the usual benediction, let 
 me say that there is no occasion for the closing words in 
 a church service to have any resemblance whatever in 
 outward form to the sentence now enjoined by the 
 Church. It therefore would be well that occasionally 
 the customary grace should give way to the seemingly 
 contradictory but essentially identical message in Matthew 
 Arnold's lines : 
 
 Say ye, " The spirit of man has found new roads, 
 
 And we must leave the old faiths and walk therein " ? 
 
 Leave then the Cross, as ye have left carved gods, 
 But guard the fire within. 
 
 These lines from George Eliot would also act as a cor- 
 rective to excessive reiteration of the customary grace : 
 
 The undivided will to seek the good 
 'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings 
 A human music from th' indifferent air. 
 
 14 
 
210 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 The same bracing atmosphere fills this verse from 
 Swinburne : 
 
 A creed is a rod 
 
 And a crown is of night, 
 But this thing is God 
 
 To be man with thy might, 
 To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit and live out 
 
 thy life as the light. 
 
 There is also a quatrain of Emerson's which is worthy 
 of being repeated by all the people of every English- 
 speaking nation for some centuries to come : 
 
 So nigh is grandeur to the dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low "Thou must," 
 
 The youth replies " I can." 
 
 And if the following sentences were to be used daily 
 throughout a lifetime, the depths of their wisdom would 
 not be fathomed : 
 
 There are two confessionals in one or the other of which 
 thou must be shriven. Either thou must satisfy the 
 demands of father, mother, or neighbour, that none of these 
 may upbraid thee, or, neglecting the dictation of others, be 
 absolved to thyself. If thou dost imagine that to dispense 
 with the authority of conventional opinion and obey the 
 inner law instead is a counsel of laxity, keep thou the 
 commandments of the inner law but for one day. 
 
 The occasions ought not to be far apart when the main 
 trend of the Church service is towards intellectual courage ; 
 then the closing words might be these : 
 
 We follow the truth, as we know it, whithersoever it 
 may lead us ; for in our hearts we are well assured, that 
 the truth which has made us free will in the end make us 
 glad also. 
 
OPENING SENTENCES & BENEDICTION 211 
 
 Or these : 
 
 If a man holds a belief, and yet suppresses doubts which 
 arise about it in his mind, avoids men and books that call 
 it in question, and regards those thoughts as impious which 
 cannot be pursued without disturbing it his life is one 
 long sin against mankind. 
 
 An alternative to this would be : 
 
 " There are two things," said Mahomet, " which I 
 abhor the learned in his infidelities, and the fool in his 
 devotions." 
 
 Nothing is more important in a scheme of public 
 worship than to avoid disproportionate emphasis of a 
 single aspect of the moral ideal. Besides giving due 
 place to the intellectual virtues now omitted, it is necessary 
 that the Church service should also bestow fuller recogni- 
 tion than it does upon the modern sense of the spiritual 
 solidarity of mankind. Only in this way would the 
 people of the nation learn to look for redemption from 
 within human society. Congregations should be reminded 
 of the interdependence of our inner lives. To this 
 end it would be helpful if the priest might say as a 
 benediction : 
 
 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, 
 and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a 
 clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, 
 and understand all mysteries and all knowledge ; and 
 though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, 
 and have not love, I am nothing. There abideth faith, 
 hope, love, these three ; but the greatest of these is love. 
 
 Or 
 
 Let us remember our spiritual indebtedness to all who 
 have shown anyone a kindness, acknowledging it in the 
 hallowed words, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the 
 least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 
 
 
212 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Wider, but not less fraught with inspiration, is the 
 spiritual sense of human unity embodied in these 
 words : 
 
 The future does not come from before to meet us it is 
 for ever streaming up from behind over our heads. Hence 
 it is that we are never alone or unsupported. Moving with 
 us and leading us on is the glorious company of those who 
 gave the world their insight and spirit, and who thus have 
 put themselves beyond death. 
 
 By such closing words the minds of the hearers would 
 be fixed upon the principle, so important to be borne 
 consciously in memory, that we have no existence apart 
 from the community into which we were born and by 
 which we are nourished. Such words would help to 
 prevent us from cutting ourselves off from the common 
 life about us, and thus committing spiritual suicide ; they 
 would open up to us that joy and life abundant which is 
 not to be found except in social service. 
 
 As it is well sometimes to introduce religious worship 
 with a direct reminder of the end for which the congrega- 
 tion have come together, so for the same reason it may be 
 advisable to close with a similar statement, such as this : 
 
 Having spent this hour together in the contemplation of 
 the higher nature of man, we go forth on our various paths 
 in life to welcome the good wherever we can find it j to 
 join with it ; and to win more and more all the forces of 
 nature and all the impulses of the human heart to the side 
 of right and into the service of man. 
 
 Or such as this : 
 
 We close this meeting with homage to the ideal of 
 human excellence, each of us saying in his heart, " I love 
 the Right ; Truth is beautiful within and without for ever- 
 more ; Virtue, I am thine ; save me ; use me ! Thee 
 will I serve day and night, in great and small, that I may 
 become one with thee." 
 
OPENING SENTENCES & BENEDICTION 213 
 
 As an injunction which would strengthen the will in 
 right-doing, nothing could be better, at the dismissal of a 
 congregation, than for the priest to say : 
 
 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might ; 
 for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, 
 in the grave whither thou goest. 
 
 As an admonition against laxity of thought and deed, 
 this advice would be helpful : 
 
 Remember these two things, and thou shalt never fall 
 into sin : within thyself is an ever-seeing eye, and in the 
 tissues of thy being are recorded thine every thought and 
 deed. 
 
 That the congregation may bear in mind that they can- 
 not live without exercising an influence for good or evil, 
 it would not be amiss to close the meeting occasionally by 
 saying : 
 
 Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an in- 
 evitable and silent influence. 
 
 Or 
 
 When we appear before men as seekers after good, so 
 that they say among themselves, " These men are a living 
 religion," thinkest thou that our teaching will not be 
 heard ? 
 
 The meaning of the Church service could not be 
 brought out more clearly than would be done by sum- 
 ming it up in the words : 
 
 We dedicate our lives to the Law of Duty, which is our 
 deepest memory, our widest vision, our most fervent hope, 
 our bravest purpose, our tenderest pity, and our purest 
 love. 
 
2i 4 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 The upward progress of the Church would be furthered 
 every time this declaration from Emerson was repeated: 
 
 There will be a new church, founded on moral science ; 
 at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again j the 
 algebra and mathematics of ethical law ; the church of men 
 to come, without shawms or psaltery or sackbut, but it will 
 have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters, science for 
 symbol and illustration j it will fast enough gather beauty, 
 music, picture, poetry. 
 
 Sweet consolation would come to weary and restless 
 
 souls from the message : 
 
 This is peace : 
 
 To conquer love of self and lust of life, 
 To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast, 
 To still the inward strife ; 
 
 To lay up lasting treasure 
 Of perfect service rendered, duties done 
 
 In charity, soft speech and stainless days ; 
 These riches shall not fade away in life, 
 Nor any death dispraise. 
 
 Two passages which would also prove to be veritable 
 benedictions, despite their variance from the accepted 
 form, I cannot resist the temptation of citing : 
 
 Bring your doctrines, your priesthoods, your precepts, 
 yea, even the inner devotion of your souls, before the 
 tribunal of Conscience. She is no man's and no god's 
 vicar, but the supreme judge of men and of gods. 
 
 Where the anchors that faith has cast 
 
 Are dragging in the gale, 
 We are quietly holding fast 
 
 To the things that cannot fail. 
 
 I would likewise commend three stanzas from Swin- 
 burne's " Songs before Sunrise," each of which for two 
 special reasons it would be expedient and wise to use, either 
 as the opening or closing sentence of a religious service. 
 The first reason is their imaginative beauty of expression, 
 
OPENING SENTENCES & BENEDICTION 215 
 
 which puts them on a level with any of the most exalted 
 passages in the Old or New Testament. The second is 
 that in these stanzas some outside being or power is 
 addressed, as is customary in all forms of prayer and 
 supplication ; yet, as is well known, it was not the infinite 
 Creator of the universe to whom the poet appealed, but 
 the Ideal Republic, the visioned society that is to be. 
 The first of the three to which I allude is this : 
 
 Mother of man's time-travelling generations, 
 Breath of his nostrils, heart-blood of his heart, 
 
 God above all gods worshipped of all nations, 
 Light beyond light, law beyond law, thou art. 
 
 The second lifts the soul still higher, and with even 
 steadier poise : 
 
 Thy face is as a sword smiting in sunder 
 
 Shadows and chains and dreams and iron things ; 
 
 The sea is dumb before thy face, the thunder 
 Silent, the skies are narrower than thy wings. 
 
 The third, if not so sublime, is more intimate and tender: 
 
 All old grey histories hiding thy clear features, 
 O secret spirit and sovereign, all men's tales, 
 
 Creeds woven of men, thy children and thy creatures, 
 They have woven for vestures of thee and for veils. 
 
 The same high level of inspiration is attained in this 
 stanza from Wordsworth's " Ode to Duty": 
 
 Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
 
 The Godhead's most benignant grace j 
 Nor know we anything so fair 
 
 As is the smile upon thy face ; 
 Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, 
 And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and 
 strong. 
 
216 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 And also in these other lines from the same poem : 
 
 Oh, let my weakness have an end ! 
 Give unto me, made lowly wise, 
 The spirit of self-sacrifice j 
 The confidence of reason give j 
 And in the light of Truth thy bondman let me live. 
 
 More daring in assertion, but equally reverent in 
 intent, are the words put by Browning into the mouth 
 of Paracelsus : 
 
 Make no more giants, God, 
 But elevate the race at once ! We ask 
 To put forth just our strength, our human strength, 
 All starting fairly, all equipped alike, 
 Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted 
 See if we cannot beat thine angels yet ! 
 
 Again, in Shelley's " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty " 
 is immortally expressed the reverence of religious devotion. 
 I give the opening stanza, with the parts grouped 
 rhythmically, and not according to metrical form, because 
 here the rhythm is more vital than the metre, and in order 
 the better to bring out the meaning : 
 
 The awful shadow of some unseen Power floats though 
 
 unseen amongst us, 
 Visiting this various world with as inconstant wing as 
 
 summer winds that creep from flower to flower. 
 Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, 
 
 it visits with inconstant glance each human heart and 
 
 countenance ; 
 Like hues and harmonies of evening, like clouds in 
 
 starlight widely spread, like memory of music fled, 
 
 like aught that for its grace may be dear, and yet 
 
 dearer for its mystery. 
 
 And what finer benediction could end a church 
 
OPENING SENTENCES & BENEDICTION 217 
 
 service than Shelley's closing invocation of this same 
 
 visitant ? 
 
 Let thy power, which like the truth 
 Of nature on my passive youth 
 Descended, to my onward life supply 
 Its calm to one who worships thee, 
 And every form containing thee j 
 Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind 
 To fear himself, and love all human kind. 
 
 As a last suggestion, I offer these lines from Mr 
 Zangwill's poem entitled " At the Worst," which give 
 the eternal answer of conscience to the doubts of 
 scepticism : 
 
 God lives as much as in the days of yore, 
 
 In fires of human love and work and song, 
 In wells of human tears that pitying throng, 
 In thunder-clouds of human wrath at wrong. 
 
 The burning bush doth not the more consume, 
 New branches shoot where old no more illume, 
 Eternal splendour flames upon the gloom. 
 
 Perchance, O ye that toil on, though forlorn, 
 By your souls' travail, your own noble scorn, 
 The very God ye crave is being born. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS 
 
 ORDINARILY, in summing up comprehensively the Christian 
 religion, its doctrines are reduced to two the immortality 
 of the soul and the personality of God. The impression 
 which such a summation gives is that in the Christian 
 scheme these two ideas are co-ordinate and equally 
 eminent and dominant. And if one were to examine 
 the prevalent preaching of the day, one would find 
 confirmation for this impression. Indeed, one might 
 even be led to the conclusion that of the two doctrines 
 the controlling one was the immortality of the soul, or 
 the life after death. One would think that Christianity's 
 supreme discipline through the ages had been to turn 
 the attention of people away from this world and its 
 transient concerns to another, with infinite and abiding 
 interests. The result is that when one for the first time 
 compares popular preaching and the ordinary summation 
 of Christian thought with the Book of Common Prayer, 
 one is startled to find that in the latter the doctrine of 
 immortality is scarcely present, and, where it does appear 
 in the regular services, it has no prominence, but, on 
 the contrary, as a regulating or guiding principle plays 
 no r61e whatever. It does not permeate and saturate 
 the sentiment of the Prayer Book, as one would expect 
 
 to find if it were one of the two vital principles of the 
 
 218 
 
THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS 219 
 
 Christian religion. Never can the effect of the Prayer 
 Book be to stimulate into intensity of passion a yearning 
 for a life after death and a denial of this world's goods 
 and claims. Not only, however, is the doctrine of im- 
 mortality thus conspicuous for its absence as an animating 
 principle, but its very opposite is in complete ascendency. 
 It is therefore thoroughly in harmony with the character 
 of the Book of Common Prayer, that thus far in this volume 
 I have treated, because of their pre-eminence in it, first the 
 Ten Commandments and then the Lord's Prayer in 
 neither of which documents is there any hint of the doctrine 
 or even of the hope of immortality, but in both of which, 
 on the contrary, religious aspiration and prophecy are only 
 towards the future of cities and nations. It was fitting, 
 then, to pass from them on to the Creeds, in which the 
 doctrine appears, but only subordinately, and not as if it 
 constituted the mainspring to the Christian life. It is 
 only in the Burial Service and the Articles that the 
 thought of a life after death is the leading sentiment ; it 
 is not so even in the Order for the Visitation of the Sick. 
 And, fortunately, assent to the Articles is not required of 
 the laity, and even from the clergy only a general agree- 
 ment is demanded ; so that the prominence of the doctrine 
 of a life after death in them does not impugn the accuracy 
 of my statement. In the Burial Service we find the 
 Prayer Book to show least signs of fine literary workman- 
 ship, liturgical construction, religious insight, and human 
 sympathy. Undoubtedly the Burial Service does imply 
 presumably to the end of consoling the mourners 
 that this life is all vanity, and that the only thing worth 
 enduring it for is to escape from it into bliss beyond ; 
 but, if this were the true sentiment of the Anglican 
 Church, it is hard to believe that the regular services 
 would not have been framed so as to cultivate in the souls 
 
220 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 of men, throughout their earth-life, an ecstatic anticipation 
 of the life beyond ; yet they certainly are not so framed. 
 
 I invite the attention of my readers to the contents of 
 the Litany, the prayers and collects, especially in relation 
 to the idea of a life after death as compared with the idea 
 of the continued life of the generations of men on earth. 
 My object in considering this special relation is not 
 negative, nor is it arbitrary ; on the contrary, a close 
 study of the Litany, prayers and collects revealed to me 
 as the chief import and trend of the Prayer Book an 
 interest in social life on earth in health, justice, 
 prosperity, wealth, peace and power. It revealed to me 
 that the Prayer Book as a whole is true in its discipline to 
 the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer, from 
 which all thought of a life after death is absent, and that 
 an intense absorption in the earth-life of man is its 
 distinguishing note. It revealed that the Prayer Book is 
 millennial and not supermundane in trend. 
 
 Take, for instance, the most superb literary and 
 liturgical composition of the Church the Litany. Its 
 form is so elaborate, and yet withal so simple and chaste, 
 that even when one scarcely attends to its substance the 
 spirit of the participant in its responses is satisfied and 
 uplifted. The essence of its substance is the love of social 
 justice. Let us pass over its initial outcries for mercy to 
 be said by priest and congregation, as they are mainly an 
 acknowledgment of the Trinity, and as I have already 
 treated of the threefold unity of moral experience when 
 considering the Creeds. We come then to the suppli- 
 cations to be spoken by the priest, with the responses 
 " Spare us, good Lord " and " Good Lord, deliver us " by 
 the people. In order that the form may not hide the 
 mental processes implied and involved in the petitions, 
 we must think what the Litany would be if, instead of 
 
THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS 221 
 
 being in the form of prayer, it were simply a direct 
 statement of desires. No one will deny that persons so 
 much moved as to cry out sincerely in public assembly 
 " Good Lord, deliver us," must in their own hearts 
 desire the things for which they pray ; and if this be so, 
 it will be possible to discard the imperative mood of 
 petition and reshape the contents into simple indicative 
 expressions of desire. Such a transformation would 
 perhaps destroy some of the emotional intensity of the 
 prayer, but not its contents or significance. Let us also, 
 in order to demonstrate how little of the substance of this 
 utterance is in any way dependent upon supernaturalistic 
 presuppositions, drop from it all phrases containing any 
 possible implications of this kind. Let us likewise find 
 universal human equivalents, if we can, for any references 
 to Jesus that might seem to impute to him powers unique 
 in kind. His life and death, as regards their influence, 
 are not without parallels in the life and death of others ; 
 our debt to him, even if greater, is similar to our debt to 
 others. When, for instance, it is said in the Litany that 
 we have been redeemed by his most precious blood, there 
 might seem to be involved a denial of the fact that we 
 are also, at least in part, redeemed by the sacrifice of 
 others besides Jesus. To attain a universalised formula, 
 however, we need only to widen the reference concerning 
 redemption by his blood so as to include the vicarious 
 sacrifice of all martyrs to the cause of humanity. 
 
 Modified in this manner, the main body of the Litany 
 might assume some such shape as this : 
 
 That our offences and the offences of our forefathers be not 
 
 remembered against us, nor vengeance of our sins taken ; 
 
 that we who have been delivered by the life and death of many 
 
 shall be spared, and that we may escape the anger of the just, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
222 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 From all evil and mischief; from sin, from the crafts 
 and assaults of malicious and lying persons ; from the 
 wrath of the good and from everlasting condemnation, 
 We long to be delivered. 
 
 From all blindness of heart ; from pride, vainglory and 
 hypocrisy ; from envy, hatred and malice and all uncharit- 
 ableness, 
 
 We long to be delivered. 
 
 From fornication and all other deadly sin ; from the 
 world and the flesh and from the plots of all mischief- 
 makers and tempters, 
 
 We long to be delivered. 
 
 From lightning and tempest ; from plague, pestilence and 
 famine ; from battle and murder and from sudden death, 
 We long to be delivered. 
 
 From all sedition, privy conspiracy and rebellion ; from 
 all false doctrine, heresy and schism ; from hardness of heart 
 and contempt for wisdom and the commandments of duty, 
 We long to be delivered. 
 
 In all time of our tribulation ; in all time of our wealth ; 
 in the day of judgment and in the hour of death, 
 
 We long to be delivered. 
 
 That the holy Church universal may be ruled and 
 governed in the right way, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That our King and Governor may be kept and 
 strengthened in righteousness and holiness of life and in 
 devotion to the nation's welfare, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That his heart may be ruled in the faith, fear and love 
 of Duty, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That he may find his defence and support in doing 
 justice, and therein gain victory over all our enemies, 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That all bishops, priests and deacons may understand the 
 laws of the universe in which we live, and the principles of 
 
THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS 223 
 
 humanity and justice, and that both by their preaching and 
 living they may set these forth and show them accordingly, 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That the lords of the Council and all the nobility may 
 be endued with grace, wisdom and understanding, 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That the magistrates shall execute justice and maintain 
 truth, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That all our people may be blessed with health and 
 secured in wealth, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That all nations may abide in unity, peace and 
 concord, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That in our hearts we may love and dread Righteous- 
 ness, and diligently live after its commandments, 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That all our people may become more willing to hear 
 new truth and receive it with pure affection, and may 
 bring forth the fruits of wisdom, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That we may bring into the way of truth all such as 
 have erred and are deceived, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That we may strengthen such as do stand, comfort and 
 help the weak-hearted, raise up them that fall, and finally 
 beat down all malice and falsehood under our feet, 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That we may succour, help and comfort all that are in 
 danger, necessity and tribulation, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 That all may be preserved who travel by land or by 
 water, all women labouring of child, all sick persons and 
 young children, and that pity may be shown upon all 
 prisoners and captives, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
224 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 To defend and provide for fatherless children and 
 widows, and all that are desolate and oppressed, 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 To have mercy upon all men, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 To forgive our enemies, persecutors and slanderers, and 
 to turn their hearts, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 To give and preserve to the use of all, the kindly fruits 
 of the earth, so as in due time they may enjoy them, 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 To feel true repentance, to forgive one another's sins, 
 negligences and ignorances, and to be endued with the 
 holy spirit of love, to amend our lives according to its 
 principles, 
 
 We most earnestly desire. 
 
 Possibly the Litany when thus modified is more con- 
 sistent than before with our deeper modern sense of 
 human responsibility ; it may better help us to realise 
 that we ourselves must defend the fatherless and the 
 oppressed than if we merely beseech the Creator to do 
 so. Also the meaning in some passages is driven closer 
 home ; for example, in the supplication (as it now stands 
 in the Litany) that it may please God to illuminate all 
 bishops with knowledge of his Word, the psychological 
 implication is that the suppliants wish that bishops should 
 investigate the laws of the universe ; but how much 
 better, then, to say so ! Likewise less unequivocal is the 
 modified form of expressing the desire that our spiritual 
 guides should go behind the written words of the Bible 
 and examine for themselves the moral facts and principles 
 which, happily, the Bible-writers did study first-hand, and 
 only afterwards committed to writing. When once we 
 have discovered the psychology underlying the Litany, 
 our minds become free to appreciate its main trend as 
 
THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS 225 
 
 not towards another world but towards the transfiguration 
 of this its catholic sympathy with suffering, its profound 
 respect and tender deference for all human beings, and 
 the intense ethic passion which inspires each clause and 
 phrase. 
 
 Although Morning and Evening Prayer are not so 
 absolutely free from the looking to a life of the individual 
 beyond death as is the Litany, still they are practically the 
 same in sentiment and tendency. While the idea of a 
 life after death sometimes appears, it is not reiterated or 
 emphasised ; it is not presented with intensity of emotion 
 or imaginative splendour. The effect of the service is not 
 to bring into the foreground of the mind of the worshippers 
 the thought of another world beyond the grave. The 
 theatre of the spiritual life is this world, and in the centre 
 of the foreground is the thought of moral purity and the 
 service of others. Let one read again, for instance, the 
 opening sentences which I have given in the previous 
 chapter ; there is no hint in them of an interest in a life 
 beyond death. And now let one read, from the same 
 point of view, the introductory exhortation to be said by 
 the priest : 
 
 Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in 
 sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins 
 and wickedness ; and that we should not dissemble nor 
 cloke them before the face of Almighty God our heavenly 
 Father ; but confess them with an humble, lowly, penitent 
 and obedient heart ; to the end that we may obtain for- 
 giveness of the same, by his infinite goodness and mercy. 
 And although we ought at all times humbly to acknowledge 
 our sins before God ; yet ought we most chiefly so to do, 
 when we assemble and meet together to render thanks for 
 the great benefits that we have received at his hands, to 
 set forth his most worthy praise, to hear his most holy 
 Word, and to ask those things which are requisite and 
 necessary, as well for the body as the soul. Wherefore I 
 
 15 
 
226 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 pray and beseech you, as many as are here present, to 
 accompany me with a pure heart, and humble voice, unto 
 the throne of the heavenly grace, saying after me ; 
 
 We might possibly, from the point of view of humanistic 
 science and national democracy, find here many little 
 points deserving adverse criticism and needing either 
 revision or removal ; but even such defects are not so 
 much inherent in the exhortation itself as in a false inter- 
 pretation of religious language. Persons are liable either 
 to make a fetish of the Bible and assign an absolute 
 rigour to theological terms, or else to turn away altogether, 
 with an equally reprehensible narrowness, from religious 
 associations and phrases. If a disbeliever in the Bible as 
 a revelation from another world would read the Prayer 
 Book as he would any other literary composition, he 
 would, for instance, take no umbrage at being invited to 
 confess his transgressions because " the Scripture moveth 
 us " so to do. In the first place, it is literally true that the 
 Bible does move us to confess our wickednesses, and that 
 no other national literature does so. It must also be con- 
 ceded by the extremest believer in reason as opposed to 
 authority, if he be a man of trained literary sense, that 
 the Bible, like any other great national literature, retains 
 for him a relative authority that which poetic genius, 
 moral insight and passion inevitably exercise over us all. 
 And when the Bible is reinstated in the reverence it 
 deserves as a purely human document, not the extremest 
 rebellion against supernaturalism will cause anyone to 
 resent being asked to practise any spiritual discipline 
 which the Bible commends, or because the Bible com- 
 mends it. Even the expression " the throne of the 
 heavenly grace " will be accepted by the worshippers of 
 reason as a most happy characterisation of the moral ideal 
 the centre of spiritual sovereignty. 
 
THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS 227 
 
 The General Confession, which follows the invitation 
 to pray, is equally without any suggestion of interest in 
 any other world than that which is now and here : 
 
 Almighty and most merciful Father j We have erred, 
 and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have 
 followed too much the devices and desires of our own 
 hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We 
 have left undone those things which we ought to have 
 done ; And we have done those things which we ought 
 not to have done ; And there is no health in us. But 
 thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. 
 Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults. 
 Restore thou them that are penitent ; According to thy 
 promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesu our Lord. 
 And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake ; That 
 we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, 
 To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen. 
 
 Here again the severest criticism can find no fault except 
 such as is due either to the interpretation of all religious 
 terminology in a supernaturalistic sense, or to the false 
 rigour of the old-fashioned way of treating the language 
 of religious emotion. For instance, because the phrase 
 " and there is no health in us " appears in the Prayer 
 Book, many would read into it the whole doctrine of 
 total depravity ; but viewed as literary expression or as 
 spontaneous utterance it contains no such implication. 
 Were any dramatic poet to represent some character as 
 saying of himself, when in a state of intense spiritual 
 discouragement, " There is no health in me," everyone 
 would intuitively understand it to be the language of 
 emotion ; and were anyone in real life thus to exaggerate 
 his own moral demerit, we should only love him the 
 better not exacting from a man speaking under inward 
 excitement the same measured temperance of phrase 
 which would be required of a scientific lecturer. 
 
228 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 The Absolution or Remission of Sins, to be pronounced 
 by the priest alone, contains in the final clause a reference 
 to the belief and hope in immortality : 
 
 Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he 
 may turn from his wickedness, and live ; and hath given 
 power, and commandment, to his Ministers, to declare and 
 pronounce to his people, being penitent, the Absolution 
 and Remission of their sins : He pardoneth and absolveth 
 all them that truly repent, and unfeignedly believe his holy 
 Gospel. Wherefore let us beseech him to grant us true 
 repentance, and his holy Spirit, that those things may 
 please him, which we do at this present ; and that the rest 
 of our life hereafter may be pure, and holy ; so that at the 
 last we may come to his eternal joy ; through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord. 
 
 Here the centre of attention is the forgiveness of sins, 
 and the power of the clergy to declare the same. The 
 introduction of the hope of immortality at the close of 
 the pronouncement is not vitally necessitated, but is a 
 mechanical addition. What probably may give much 
 more offence to the confirmed humanist and democrat, 
 however, is the implied possession by the clergy of an 
 exclusive power to pronounce the remission of sins ; but 
 even here the offence must be traced to the supernatural- 
 istic interpretation of the office of the priest. If he were 
 regarded as simply the representative of the nation, and 
 if he had been democratically elected to his office, it 
 would be altogether suitable that he and only he should 
 pronounce the remission of sins. If it be a fact that the 
 community is the power that forgives, and he speaks in the 
 name of the community, what ground of objection can we 
 have to the exclusive delegation of this function to him ? 
 In the case of ordinary criminals, only the Home Secre- 
 tary can pronounce the Sovereign's pardon. Altogether 
 
THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS 229 
 
 anarchic and individualistic is the notion that any and every- 
 body, however unofficial, may declare the absolution of sins. 
 Once transform the organisation of the Church in accord- 
 ance with the principles of democracy, and enlighten the 
 people as to the national significance of religion and its 
 forms, and no enlightened humanist could wish to revise 
 a word of this part of the Absolution. Even the state- 
 ment that God pardons men if, besides repenting, they 
 " unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel," must be altogether 
 acceptable to the naturalist in religion ; for he will be the 
 first to admit that the New Testament, despite whatever 
 spiritism it may contain, is essentially an ethical message, 
 which must be believed if a man's repentance is to lead 
 him to a new life. 
 
 In all the remaining constant items of Morning and 
 Evening Prayer there is no allusion to the idea or the 
 hope of immortality except in the Creed, the prayers 
 for the King and the Royal Family, and the prayer of 
 St Chrysostom. The prayer for the King closes, " And 
 finally after this life he may attain everlasting joy and 
 felicity." In that for the Royal Family, the words are, 
 " And bring them to thine everlasting kingdom." The 
 prayer of St Chrysostom closes, " Granting us in this 
 world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come 
 life everlasting." Surely, such being the utterly insigni- 
 ficant r61e which the hope of immortality plays in Morn- 
 ing and Evening Service, nobody can maintain that it is 
 one of the cardinal doctrines of the Anglican religion. 
 
 When one passes to the collects arranged for the days 
 and seasons throughout the Church's year, one immedi- 
 ately notes in them a drop both in the ethical insight 
 and in the sincerity of the style. They awaken a strong 
 suspicion that they are not so much genuine breath- 
 ings forth of religious experience and aspiration as 
 
2 3 o NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 mechanical compositions by ecclesiastics, made to order, 
 as introductions to the epistle and gospel readings. As 
 the ethical insight is lacking, we find what we might 
 naturally expect : in place of the homely, simple speech 
 of the Litany there is a stilted and splendid rhetoric ; in 
 place of cries of sympathy and love there are substituted 
 avowals of doctrinal belief in a post-mortem day of 
 judgment, in a resurrection of the body and in a life after 
 death. Take, for instance, the collect for the first Sunday 
 in Advent. Underlying its structure is the dogmatic 
 contrast between " now in the time of this mortal life " 
 and "the last day," and between the humility of Jesus 
 Christ as he was on earth and his glorious majesty as he 
 will be then. It reads : 
 
 Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away 
 the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of 
 light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy 
 Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility ; that 
 in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious 
 Majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may 
 rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and 
 reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. 
 Amen. 
 
 Again, the thought in the collect for St Stephen's Day 
 is touching in itself, and yet its very fullness and swing 
 betray that it was written by some prosperous Bishop 
 Blougram. The whole prayer is a pose ; it cannot have 
 been written by one who had suffered for testifying to 
 belief in Jesus Christ, and it ought not to be uttered by 
 those who have not been persecuted for their faith in him. 
 It runs thus : 
 
 Grant, O Lord, that in all our sufferings here upon earth 
 for the testimony of thy truth, we may stedfastly look up 
 to heaven, and by faith behold the glory that shall be 
 revealed ; and, being filled with the holy Ghost, may 
 
THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS 231 
 
 learn to love and bless our persecutors by the example of 
 thy first Martyr Saint Stephen, who prayed for his 
 murderers to thee, O blessed Jesus, who standest at the 
 right hand of God to succour all those that suffer for thee, 
 our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen. 
 
 Another instance of constrained rhetoric and forced 
 metaphor, such as betrays a similar insincerity, is to be 
 found in the collect for the Innocents' Day. No external 
 evidence is required to bring the reader of it to the 
 conviction that the person who wrote it was at his wits' 
 end to find some parallel in the experience of his genera- 
 tion to the slaughter of the innocents ; and that, finding 
 none, he tricked up an analogy comparing our vices, 
 mortified in repentance as if slaughtered by Christ to 
 the innocent children slaughtered by Herod. But what 
 could be more preposterous than that vices should be 
 compared with innocent children ? One can scarcely 
 believe that an honest Christian could have done such 
 dishonest literary work. The collect stands : 
 
 O Almighty God, who out of the mouths of babes and 
 sucklings hast ordained strength, and madest infants to 
 glorify thee by their deaths ; Mortify and kill all vices in 
 us, and so strengthen us by thy grace, that by the innocency 
 of our lives, and constancy of our faith even unto death, 
 we may glorify thy holy Name ; through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord. Amen. 
 
 After this, I need not proceed further to analyse the 
 collects. 
 
 Let us turn to the " prayers and thanksgivings, upon 
 several occasions, to be used before the two final prayers 
 of the Litany, or of Morning and Evening Prayer." The 
 judgment to be passed upon them from the truly scientific 
 point of view is different from that generally passed upon 
 them even by the advanced thinkers who call themselves 
 
232 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 theistic evolutionists. These are in the habit of approving 
 of prayers for purely spiritual blessings, but of deprecating 
 supplications for rain, for fair weather, for a return of 
 plenty in time of dearth and famine, for peace in time of 
 war and tumults, and for health in periods of plague or 
 sickness. But I would venture to think that, underneath 
 the absurdities of these petitions for material help, there 
 is profound scientific and religious insight, which will 
 soon justify itself in the eyes of all men. If there be 
 any fact distinguishing our modern life, it is that human 
 power over nature has multiplied ten thousandfold within 
 one century. Formerly, man's physical environment had 
 control over him, as it still has over the lower animals ; 
 but within the last century he has seized upon the secret 
 of controlling it. Consequently, many of the most fickle 
 and elusive phenomena of nature have become already 
 obedient to him ; and he can now forestall calamities by 
 introducing preventive causes in anticipation. Accord- 
 ingly, if the prayer for rain to take an example be 
 compared with modern demands of the people upon the 
 resources of science and invention, it is seen to be as 
 nothing in the audacity of its request. The prayer 
 reads : 
 
 O God, . . . send us, we beseech thee, in this our 
 necessity, such moderate rain and showers, that we may 
 receive the fruits of the earth to our comfort, and to thy 
 honour j through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 In the future, when God is identified with human 
 foresight and good-will, this prayer will be accounted 
 absurd by scientific thinkers, not because God does not 
 interfere with the order of physical phenomena, but 
 because, instead of merely sending moderate rains after a 
 drought has already done mischief, he will be expected 
 
THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS 233 
 
 to prevent anxiety altogether by extensive systems of 
 irrigation. While the immediate cause of damage to 
 crops and life may be the weather, its ultimate cause is 
 nearly always the preventable ignorance or inconsiderate- 
 ness, or both, of human agents. Nearly all great physical 
 disasters, even those that seem at first wholly removed 
 from moral causes, are to be traced finally to selfishness 
 on the part of some class of persons. Untold sufferings, 
 endured by the innocent as if inevitable in the nature of 
 things, ensue generally from the apathy or wickedness 
 of somebody at some time. This wickedness may not 
 have been fully self-conscious, and certainly the awful 
 calamities which it was sure to entail were not vividly 
 anticipated ; but sufferers will some day learn to pray 
 with sufficient importunity to human intelligence and 
 human love, to end these causes of calamity. 
 
 The prayers for rain and for deliverance from natural 
 catastrophes lead our thought inevitably to a consideration 
 of the general relation between righteousness and happi- 
 ness. The majority of people have for countless ages 
 felt that some great mystery lurks in the evident fact 
 that righteousness leads to universal happiness, and 
 iniquity to general misery and towards death. They 
 have seen no inherent and self-evident necessity whereby 
 righteousness should produce universal welfare and misery 
 emanate from moral transgression ; and, seeing no such 
 inherent necessity, they have logically been forced to the 
 inference that some outside person has by extraneous 
 means linked general welfare on to righteousness. If 
 nobody connected the two, the connection is, they think, 
 an inexplicable mystery. If I am not mistaken, this sense 
 of a mystery in the relation of morality to outward pro- 
 sperity is the ultimate cause of almost all belief in an over- 
 ruling personal agency dominating man and the universe. 
 
234 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 It leads to the setting up not of righteousness, not of 
 good conduct, and not of the power inherent in good 
 conduct, as God, but of another power who hitches prosper- 
 ity on to good conduct. Righteousness, they say, in itself 
 is admirable and altogether comprehensible ; so is prosperity 
 both good and self-explanatory ; but that the latter should 
 follow in the train of the former proves that there is a 
 Power higher than either, because constraining both. 
 
 This sense of mystery has so dominated in the religious 
 consciousness of the past, and is so prevalent to-day, that 
 many mistake it for the very essence of piety. It leads 
 to spiritism ; it engenders fear ; it drives to an abject 
 surrender of reason ; for when connections of events are 
 traced back to the arbitrary will of a person, the human 
 judgment is cornered and cannot escape. To persons in 
 whom the religious consciousness chiefly consists of the 
 sense of mystery, the notion of getting rid of the mystery 
 appears impious and atheistic. They fear that the con- 
 sequence would be a losing of all reverence for righteous- 
 ness, and they seem even to dread lest the fact will be 
 denied that to righteousness belongs happiness, if the 
 belief in an overruling connector of righteousness with 
 happiness should cease. But surely here is a case where 
 the cart is put before the horse. Why will the connection 
 of two events, which led to a certain explanation of them, 
 cease to be seen, simply because the explanation has been 
 found inadequate to account for it ? And why will the 
 beneficence of the connection be any less an occasion for 
 rejoicing after a theory, formed to account for it, has 
 been explained away, than before ? If it were possible 
 to render perfectly self-evident and simple the con- 
 nection of general welfare with righteousness, it is 
 my conviction that, although the sense of mysterious- 
 ness would be ended, the human significance and worth 
 
THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS 235 
 
 of the connection would be infinitely enhanced ; the 
 whole heart could then be given to righteousness as 
 the cause of human happiness, and all the energy be 
 converted into a means towards the supreme end of 
 righteousness. 
 
 What is, then, the real explanation of the fact that to 
 righteousness belongs life, and to wickedness pain, horror 
 and death ? It is, in the first place, this : Only after men 
 have discovered that a line of conduct leads to general prosperity 
 have they called it righteous. This mental sequence scatters 
 absolutely the mysteriousness of the connection. What- 
 ever was seen to lead to general prosperity was named 
 moral ; but if such was the case, there was nothing at all 
 wonderful in the fact that righteous conduct led to general 
 prosperity. How can there be a mystery or a sense of 
 mystery about the fact that the natural cause of a thing 
 produces the thing ? That is the very opposite of a 
 mystery. It would be a staggering puzzle if in one 
 instance an event which had been scientifically verified 
 to be the universal precedent of a certain effect did not 
 inevitably produce that effect. There is nothing further 
 to be explained in the connection of any two events when 
 the whole of our experience and organised common sense 
 have led us to anticipate the connection ; for then the 
 sense of mystery never arises. 
 
 If the matter is so very simple as I affirm, it may be 
 asked : How is it possible that the human mind has 
 almost universally come to possess a sense of unutterable 
 mystery when face to face with the spread of woe from 
 wickedness and of happiness from virtue ? The answer, 
 however, is close at hand. Primitive statesmen, seeing 
 that a certain line of conduct tended towards the degenera- 
 tion and collapse of the tribe or nation, condemned it 
 and subjected it to social and political censure. They 
 
236 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 branded it as wrong, and attached adventitious penalties 
 in threat upon any who pursued it. Then the unthinking 
 multitude, not seeing the remoter calamity that would 
 ensue to the nation, or possibly not caring about it, were 
 acutely aware of the word and authority of the ruler and 
 of his penalties. Thus the multitude plainly saw the 
 connection between wrong-doing and the command of a 
 person in power, and the punishment inflicted by that 
 person ; and they accordingly abstained from the acts 
 stigmatised as transgressions because they were so com- 
 manded and threatened. And if they did the acts, it 
 was because these were immediately pleasant to them, or 
 of benefit permanently to their favoured few. 
 
 We have thus not only explained fully the connection 
 of general prosperity with righteousness, but have also 
 accounted adequately for the origin of the sense of 
 mystery, and have proved its unjustifiability. By states- 
 men, that conduct has always been regarded as right which 
 they thought served the nation, in distinction from that 
 which benefited a few at the expense of the nation. But 
 hitherto morality has not been considered by the people as 
 a means towards the permanent preservation of the nation, 
 but as a thing commanded, an end in itself, a line of 
 conduct unrelated to the point whither it led. Now, how- 
 ever, with the advent of democracy, when all the citizens 
 of a country are beginning to partake of the responsibilities 
 of political government, the whole people will come to 
 regard morality as the sum-total of the means by which their 
 nation would be able to live in health, wealth, efficiency, 
 beauty and truth for ever and ever. We shall thus return 
 to the point of view of the Old Testament prophets and 
 law-givers. We shall call only that righteousness which 
 makes for general welfare ; and then, with the mystery 
 gone, the moral law will become irresistible in its cogency, 
 
THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS 237 
 
 while remaining for ever flexible and delicately adjusting 
 itself to new emergencies. 
 
 But there are still a depth and a complexity of the inner 
 moral life which must be analysed. How is it that the 
 human spirit intuitively bows in reverence and awe 
 before every deed of self-sacrifice for the general welfare ? 
 Here is a connection supremely wonderful, because it 
 inevitably arouses disinterested admiration and in the 
 highest degree a sense of the sublime. It is man's moral 
 nature that makes us pause in admiration ; it is not that 
 certain lines of conduct lead to universal welfare, but that 
 those lines should charm and fascinate the heart and will 
 of an individual being, and compel him to pursue them 
 even at the cost of every future pleasure and of his own 
 conscious existence. The fact that the members of no 
 tribe have ever sanctioned those deeds which they thought 
 made for the destruction of the tribe is not denied by any 
 anthropologist. Never among any people is that man 
 disinterestedly admired and praised who has knowingly, 
 in the judgment of the people, risked the existence of the 
 tribe for his own gain. To that which has seemed the 
 nation-benefiting deed, as contrasted with that which 
 would benefit the individual at the expense of the nation, 
 has always been rendered disinterested applause. If there 
 be anywhere a ground for the sense of mystery, it is not 
 that to the causes of universal welfare is attached universal 
 welfare, but that to these causes is attached the inmost 
 heart and soul of every child of humanity, so that in fact 
 that attachment is the essence and reality of his being. 
 
 Even here, however, there is of course no justification 
 for the sense of mystery. According to the law of 
 natural selection, it is easy to show that those tribes 
 among whom deeds destructive to the community were 
 applauded and honoured soon became extinct. It is easy 
 
2 3 8 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 to see, on the- other hand, that a habit of disinterestedly 
 approving deeds of self-sacrifice for the general welfare 
 would be a tribal asset of incalculable value. It would 
 tend to the survival of the tribe, and thereby to the 
 perpetuation of the peculiarity, according to the law of 
 the transmission of innate characteristics. But while there 
 is no mystery here, in the sense of a thing which cannot 
 be fully explained to the discursive understanding, there 
 is ground for an emotion in many respects akin to the 
 sense of mystery : the emotion of unbounded and 
 intuitive admiration. Someone has maintained that there 
 are two kinds of mystery that of midnight, where 
 nothing is seen and all is only dimly felt or suspected, 
 and that of midday, where everything is so fully seen that 
 the splendour dazzles and almost blinds. The awfulness 
 of the incomprehensible is one thing ; the sublimity of 
 the self-evident is another, and a deeper and higher. The 
 self-evident is by its very nature the ultimate, in the sense 
 that that which explains everything else cannot itself need 
 explanation. But on that account it only the more 
 arouses our reverence. 
 
 Such is man's moral intuition. At most we can trace 
 its natural history and dissect it into its psychological 
 and sociological elements. We can see, for instance, that 
 a man's volitional response to the ethical imperative is the 
 Will of the Community, the organic unity of Man living 
 in him and constituting his inmost self. We may not 
 call this a mystery, because it is all clear ; but it is mystic. 
 The universal, the general, is seen at the centre of our 
 clearest consciousness to constitute the reality of the in- 
 dividual and the particular. It is mystic, because sur- 
 render to conscience satisfies the inmost and deepest crav- 
 ing of our nature, and thus creates the sense of intimacy 
 and identity with the absolute reality of things. We 
 
THE LITANY, PRAYERS AND COLLECTS 239 
 
 feel and see ourselves in essence to be one with Perfect 
 Goodness and Creative Power, and not alien to the Vision 
 of the Beauty Ineffable which entrances us. 
 
 The Litany and, in general, the prayers of Morning 
 and Evening Service, are, like the Lord's Prayer, cries of 
 the individual will, conscious of inward, mystic identity 
 with the General Will and challenging the General Will 
 existent in others, and in the nation-Church and the 
 nation-State, to establish its dominion. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 
 
 IN pre-Reformation times, the Psalter was sung through 
 once every week ; since then, even where the clergy have 
 carried out their full legal duty, it has been repeated only 
 once every month ; and it is probable that after the next 
 revision of the nation's manual of Divine Service, to meet 
 the spiritual needs of the people, it will be sung through 
 only once a year. But it is more likely still, inasmuch as the 
 psalms are not all equally edifying, that a number will be 
 wholly discarded, while others will be repeated even oftener 
 than they are at present ; and the special ones which are now 
 repeated most frequently, will be used least often of all. 
 
 There are two reasons which will lead to such a 
 revolution. In the first place, the national situations 
 depicted by the psalmists are as little like those in which 
 the English people has found itself during the last 
 thousand years as can well be imagined. Nothing could 
 be more unlike the fate of Israel than the destiny of 
 Britain. Equally dissimilar are the temperament and the 
 poetic imagination of the two nations ; and a still greater 
 contrast exists between their conceptions of the universe 
 and its relations to human ideals. In the second place, 
 English poetry is rich in native psalms, for which a place 
 
 will surely be found in Morning and Evening Prayer, 
 
 240 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 241 
 
 the moment our spiritual guides become as alert to the 
 national significance of religious worship as were the 
 Hebrew statesmen of old. 
 
 In illustration of the unfitness of the psalms for the 
 people of England, let us take Psalm 95, the "Venite, 
 exultemus Domino," which is now said or sung always at 
 Morning Prayer, except on Easter Day. Of this psalm, 
 Wellhausen says : 
 
 An exhortation, spoken by God, begins abruptly in the 
 last line of v. 7. There is no link between the two halves 
 of the psalm. Probably there is no real connection 
 between them ; for the exhortation, vv. 8-n, accords illy 
 with the exultation of vv. 1-7. Two fragments seem to 
 have been united. The end, as well as the beginning, of 
 the second fragment is lost, v. 1 1 not being a conclusion. 
 Yet vv. i 7 a may perhaps form a whole. 
 
 From a purely literary point of view, a bad patchwork 
 like this is not worthy of the eminence it possesses in 
 the Anglican Church. The first half is altogether below 
 the merit of the profoundly ethical Introductory Sentences, 
 Exhortation to Prayer, General Confession, Absolution, 
 and the Lord's Prayer, which, together with the versicles, 
 constitute the service up to the point where Psalm 95 is 
 introduced. The first seven verses of it are exclusively 
 a nature-hymn that is, a song in praise not of goodness 
 or of the power of goodness, but of physical might. It 
 is used by the Church evidently for the sole reason that 
 it opens with an invitation to praise the Lord, and an 
 invitation to praise him is needed at this point in the 
 service. But this invitation constitutes only the first two 
 verses of the psalm. They are : 
 
 O come, let us sing unto the Lord : let us heartily 
 rejoice in the strength of our salvation. 
 
 Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving : 
 and show ourselves glad in him with psalms. 
 
 16 
 
242 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 The use of these two verses by no means justifies the 
 following five, which are full of prostration before mere 
 power : 
 
 For the Lord is a great God : and a great King above 
 all gods. 
 
 In his hand are all the corners of the earth : and the 
 strength of the hills is his also. 
 
 The sea is his, and he made it : and his hands prepared 
 the dry land. 
 
 O come, let us worship, and fall down : and kneel 
 before the Lord our Maker. 
 
 For he is the Lord our God : and we are the people of 
 his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. 
 
 There are many other verses in the psalms which would 
 have been more in harmony than these with the spirit of 
 Anglicanism, and which could have been attached with 
 perfect literary smoothness to the two verses of invitation 
 to praise. If well done, such a joining of pieces is its 
 own justification. Unity of design is a sufficient excuse 
 for it ; and if that is lacking the composition is to be 
 condemned not because it is patchwork, but because, like 
 Psalm 95, it is carelessly made. 
 
 Take now the second portion of this psalm. It reads : 
 
 To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts : 
 as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in 
 the wilderness ; 
 
 When your fathers tempted me : proved me, and saw my 
 works. 
 
 Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and 
 said : It is a people that do err in their hearts, for they 
 have not known my ways. 
 
 Unto whom I sware in my wrath : that they should 
 not enter into my rest. 
 
 These verses cannot have the force of a direct reference 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 243 
 
 to some event in English history ; nor have they great 
 literary merit or a tone which is finely inspiring. 
 
 Even psalms which are exquisitely beautiful often 
 contain nothing parallel to the experience of the British 
 nation ; and, besides, in them the sentiment of patriotic 
 devotion is sometimes vitiated by a violent craving for 
 revenge upon enemies, which is shocking to our sense 
 of righteousness and is degrading to us in proportion as 
 we allow ourselves to be moved by it. Take, for instance, 
 Psalm 137, which, although so familiar, I will reprint 
 here, in order that its fitness for a manual of Anglican 
 worship may be critically tested. Artistically it is perfect ; 
 but ethically it is rendered hideous by the sentiment of 
 the last two verses : 
 
 By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept : when 
 we remembered thee, O Sion. 
 
 As for our harps, we hanged them up : upon the trees 
 that are therein. 
 
 For they that led us away captive required of us then a 
 song, and melody, in our heaviness : Sing us one of the 
 songs of Sion. 
 
 How shall we sing the Lord's song : in a strange land ? 
 
 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem : let my right hand forget 
 her cunning. 
 
 If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the 
 roof of my mouth : yea, if I prefer not Jerusalem in my 
 mirth. 
 
 Remember the children of Edom, O Lord, in the day 
 of Jerusalem : how they said, Down with it, down with 
 it, even to the ground. 
 
 O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery : yea, happy 
 shall he be that rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us. 
 
 Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children : and 
 throweth them against the stones. 
 
 It is conceivable that a calamity might have happened 
 to the people of London such as had befallen those of 
 Jerusalem. In 586 B.C. the Jews as a nation were 
 
244 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 destroyed ; their city was sacked ; its siege of a year and 
 a half ended with the burning of the Temple and all its 
 other buildings. Some eighteen to twenty thousand 
 representatives of the governing classes were taken away 
 to Babylon, and it was only 1 50 years later that the last 
 of the exiles were allowed to return. It would have 
 been a similar experience for the people of England, if 
 150 years ago Frederick the Great, let us say, had 
 conquered England, had destroyed the Houses of 
 Parliament, the Abbey and St Paul's, and had taken 
 all the leaders and all the voters of the nation to Prussia 
 and settled them there, and if only now the descendants 
 of such exiles had been allowed to return and rebuild 
 London. But would it not be better for the State 
 Church of England to postpone the authorisation of the 
 singing of this psalm until such a calamity has overtaken 
 us ? If it be retorted that we are not so narrow in our 
 nationalism as not to sing this hymn of wailing and 
 bitter hatred simply because we have never suffered in 
 the same manner, but are prompted to sing it by direct 
 sympathy for the beloved Hebrew people, must not the 
 answer in return be : Do the English people so love the 
 Jews ? Is there any such sympathy ? And, what is 
 more, is not the very admiration which we have for them 
 due to the fact that they, unlike ourselves, in their 
 religion were absolutely loyal to their own past, their 
 own suffering, and out of these constructed for them- 
 selves immortal songs of grief and courageous hope ? 
 Can we imagine that the Jews would ever have developed 
 the heroic loyalty to one another which has caused them, 
 at least as a tribe, to survive through centuries of op- 
 pression, had they been willing after the Exile to sing 
 in the second Temple hymns as little reminiscent and pro- 
 phetic of their own life as are the Hebrew psalms of ours ? 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 245 
 
 Another equally significant change in the use of the 
 Hebrew Psalter will accompany the reduction in the 
 number of times it is to be repeated. Whoever is 
 acquainted with the results of the new scholarship which 
 has been applied to the Book of Psalms, knows that, the 
 moment that scholarship becomes the general heritage of 
 the devout people of England, not the Prayer Book 
 rendering, nor that either of the Authorised or of the 
 Revised Version of the Bible, can be adopted. The 
 chief objection to all three renderings is due to their use 
 of the word " Lord." Now, the factor in experience to 
 which this word is made to point is the eternal burden 
 of the Psalms, and ultimately their ethical value depends 
 greatly on a correct understanding of its meaning. Yet 
 everybody knows that the rendering " Lord " is incorrect ; 
 it never pretended to be otherwise. The original, how- 
 ever, was a cause of great embarrassment, and to trans- 
 late it " Lord " was the best device which could at the 
 time be hit upon. Yet the word " Lord " does not in 
 the least suggest the connotation which the original had 
 in the minds of the composers of the Psalms. To make 
 the situation clear for those who have not followed the 
 newer criticism of the Bible, I cannot do better than to 
 quote Wellhausen's note on the use of the word JHVH, 
 and the note on this note by Professor Haupt, the editor of 
 the Polychrome Bible, attached to the first line of the second 
 verse of Psalm i, which in the Polychrome Bible reads, 
 " But delights in the Law of JHVH." Wellhausen 
 
 says : 
 
 It is very doubtful whether the Israelites continued to 
 pronounce their special name for God at the time when the 
 composition of Psalms was at its height. Yet we can 
 hardly substitute God or The Lord, seeing that, in writing, 
 the distinction was maintained between /tfF/f(Heb. 
 E/ohim, " God," and Adonai, " Lord." 
 
246 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 And Haupt adds : 
 
 JHVH represents the Ineffable Name of the Supreme 
 Being, erroneously written and pronounced Jehovah, which 
 is merely a combination of the consonants of the sacred 
 tetragrammaton and of the vowels in the Hebrew word for 
 Lord, substituted by the Jews for JHVH, because they 
 shrank from pronouncing the name, owing to an old 
 misconception of the two passages, Ex. xx. 7 and 
 Lev. xxiv. 1 6. The true pronunciation of JHVH seems 
 to have been Tahwe (or lahway, the initial I=y as in 
 lachimo). The final e should be pronounced like the 
 French e, or the English e in there, and the first h sounded 
 as an aspirate. The accent should be on the final syllable. 
 To give to the name JHVH the vowels of the word for 
 Lord (Heb. Adonai], and pronounce it Jehovah, is about as 
 hybrid a combination as it would be to spell the name 
 Germany with the vowels in the name Portugal, viz. 
 Gormuna. The monstrous combination Jehovah is not 
 older than about 1520 A.D. The meaning of JHVH is 
 uncertain. 
 
 Without further citing authorities, we may take it for 
 granted, then, that where the words " the Lord " appear 
 in our translations they must be dropped, and that the 
 word Jehovah, being so monstrous a hybrid, cannot be 
 allowed in their place. Nor is it possible to think that 
 English literary taste could ever accept the use of JHVH, 
 adopted in the Polychrome translation, and pronounce it 
 TahwL It would, however, be wholly consonant with 
 general custom, if the word were to be thus pronounced, 
 to spell it so. 
 
 Now, this juncture in Biblical scholarship affords the 
 very opportunity which those who accept Matthew 
 Arnold's ethical interpretation of the Old Testament 
 sorely need, and for which some of them have been 
 waiting. Here is a new word for the Hebrew God, 
 Tahwe, which no mortal outside of the libraries of 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 247 
 
 scholars knows anything about ; and it is presented at 
 the very time when a new an ethical and a naturalistic 
 interpretation has also been discovered by Biblical scholars 
 to be the correct one for that same deity. 
 
 Now, those who believe in worshipping the Power of 
 Righteousness as God are in a predicament, because there 
 is no one name that stands for this conception. It is to 
 this day the Nameless One, the Ineffable. Such words 
 as Duty, Conscience, Righteousness, do not cover it, for 
 the meaning is not Duty, but the Power inherent in Duty ; 
 and so with the other words. We want, then, a name 
 for all human dispositions, deeds and institutions which 
 make for the eternal continuance and welfare of nations. 
 Could not persons feeling the want seize upon this 
 fruit of the new knowledge of the Old Testament, and 
 use it ? They would be giving no offence to traditional 
 sentiment by appropriating the word Yahwe, but would 
 be gaining a name for the ineffable element in moral 
 experience. 
 
 There is perhaps, from the point of view of national 
 expediency, no fundamental objection to our giving a 
 purely ethical and naturalistic significance to the word 
 Lord ; for while it is not so near to the Hebrew original, 
 it does suggest sovereignty, such as every worshipper of 
 the power of duty counts as descriptive of its claim upon 
 him. But if popular sentiment refused to attach the 
 new interpretation to the old word, let the word Tahwe 
 be adopted, for the sake of peace. 
 
 Here I have been touching upon a theme which I 
 discussed in a chapter entitled " Theological Terms in a 
 Humanistic Sense," in my volume on National Idealism 
 and a State Church. I have done so, because critics have 
 been inclined to misunderstand my position, and, as it seems 
 to me, to depreciate the importance of appropriating the 
 
248 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 old terms to the dominant factors in our moral experience. 
 For instance, one of my critics so far misunderstands me 
 as to call me an Agnostic, and to say that with me " it 
 is the Church that is right and the Jehovah that is 
 wrong." Now, there is nothing at least of Spencerian 
 Agnosticism in my position, for I do not believe that 
 the ultimate reality of things is unknowable, but that it 
 is of the nature of mind. Furthermore, my position is 
 that the Church is right because the Jehovah is right ; 
 he is essentially the Power of Righteousness. Another 
 of my critics says (in the International Journal of 
 Ethics) : " He insists so relentlessly on the banishment 
 of supernaturalism and all its works that his retention of 
 the terms of supernaturalism particularly his somewhat 
 curious anxiety to retain its vocabulary in full carries 
 with it an unavoidable air of whimsicality." But my 
 plea, I maintain, could appear whimsical only to one 
 who was not driven by the necessity of preaching the 
 power of righteousness as the reality worthy of supreme 
 worship. A preacher, needing words in order to convey 
 a meaning, cannot admit himself whimsical in appropriat- 
 ing terms which he believes always have referred to the 
 same realities as those he indicates, instead of inventing 
 a new language. And so I would here add to the 
 vocabulary of humanistic ethical religion the terms 
 "Lord" and "Yahwe." 
 
 If anyone doubts that the psalmists, in proportion as 
 they were truly great and have been of inspiration to 
 the world, did mean the power of righteousness by the 
 four letters JHVH, let him substitute " the Power of 
 Righteousness " in the place of the word now translated 
 " Lord " in the popular English versions of the Psalms. 
 It will be found that some passages thus modified will 
 not possess so immediate and literal a meaning as when 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 249 
 
 the Lord is interpreted as the personal Creator of the 
 universe. There are psalms which seem to identify God 
 not so much with conscience as with the universal power 
 of nature ; or to put it otherwise which identify the 
 universal power of nature with the power of righteous- 
 ness : for instance, Psalm 19, from the first to the sixth 
 verses. But there is a sense in which the heavens declare 
 the glory of the power of righteousness, and the firma- 
 ment proclaims its handiwork, even for one who does 
 not predicate of that power anything unverified in experi- 
 ence. Of this thought, however, I have already treated 
 in the chapter on the Creeds ; and most of the psalms 
 do not even remotely hint that the power of righteous- 
 ness is identical with the power of all nature, in such a 
 way as to compel us to deny the existence of evil or to 
 trace it to the power of goodness. 
 
 The substitution of " the Power of Righteousness " 
 for " the Lord " will of course sound harsh, and will tend 
 to destroy the beauty of the poetry, because it will put 
 an end to the personification ; but I am not pleading, 
 let it be remembered, that we should say " the Power of 
 Righteousness " wherever the word Lord appears. I am 
 pleading that we should say the word " Yahwe" or "Lord," 
 and should continue the personification, using the pro- 
 noun "he" wherever it is now used. What I am 
 advocating is, however, that when we read Yahwe or 
 Lord, we shall think " the Power of Righteousness " ; 
 then I believe that gradually the emotions associated 
 with the thought will attach themselves to the words, 
 and the language of religious experience will be im- 
 measurably enriched. If we, for the moment, sub- 
 stitute for " the Lord " " the Power of Righteousness " 
 in the opening two verses of the first psalm, they will 
 read : 
 
250 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel 
 of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners : and hath 
 not sat in the seat of the scornful. 
 
 But his delight is in the law of the Power of Righteous- 
 ness : and in its law will he exercise himself day and 
 night. 
 
 And in Psalm 1 5 how close the logic becomes ! 
 
 O Power of Righteousness, who shall dwell in thy 
 tabernacle : or who shall rest upon thy holy hill ? 
 
 Even he, that leadeth an uncorrupt life : and doeth 
 the thing which is right, and speaketh the truth from his 
 heart. 
 
 He that hath used no deceit in his tongue, nor done 
 evil to his neighbour : and hath not slandered his neighbour, 
 
 and so forth. Likewise in Psalm 19, verses 7-8 : 
 
 The law of the Power of Righteousness is an undefiled 
 law, converting the soul : the testimony of the Power of 
 Righteousness is sure, and giveth wisdom unto the simple. 
 
 The statutes of the Power of Righteousness are right, 
 and rejoice the heart. 
 
 Psalm 23 will begin : 
 
 The Power of Righteousness is my shepherd : therefore 
 can I lack nothing. 
 
 Psalm 37, verses 3-5, will be : 
 
 Put thou thy trust in the Power of Righteousness, and 
 be doing good : dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt 
 be fed. 
 
 Delight thou in the Power of Righteousness : and it 
 shall give thee thy heart's desire. 
 
 Commit thy way unto the Power of Righteousness, 
 and put thy trust in it : and it shall bring thy way to 
 pass. 
 
 The new Biblical scholarship, when it becomes the 
 general possession of the people, will in many ways give 
 an added charm and meaning to the Psalms, besides 
 causing the word Lord to point to the power of righteous- 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 251 
 
 ness. For instance, when it becomes known that in many 
 of the Psalms the " I " and the " me " refer not to an in- 
 dividual person but to the nation itself, the moral beauty 
 and dignity of the poems from the point of view of 
 national idealism become enormously enhanced. It will 
 be a gain to England when the English people, singing 
 Psalm 51, know that it was not an individual Jew but the 
 nation itself that was speaking in the words, " Create in 
 me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within 
 me." Whenever Christians have taken the Psalms as 
 voicing the yearnings and experiences of an individual 
 person, they have not only given an interpretation to the 
 original which is not correct, but they have fallen away 
 from that magnificent and inspiring sense of national 
 solidarity which characterised the prophets and poets of 
 ancient Judaism. In the article on the Psalms in the 
 Encyclopedia Biblica occurs the passage : " It is often 
 said that the practice of those who prepare hymn-tunes for 
 congregational use is against Smend's view, hymns which 
 were originally the expression of the inward experience of 
 individuals in circumstances more or less peculiar to them- 
 selves being adapted to more general use by omissions, 
 additions, and other large or small alterations. The com- 
 parison, however, is hazardous, the awakening of in- 
 dividual life in the Western nations since the introduction 
 of Christianity having no parallel in the Semitic East. 
 Those hymns in the Old Testament which were tradition- 
 ally supposed to be the effusions of individuals . . . 
 turn out to be nothing of the kind, but simply expressions 
 of the faith of the pious community of Israel.'* 
 
 While we must never lose the intense inwardness and 
 individuality of Christian sentiment, we must, I believe, 
 regain the old Jewish sense of national solidarity which 
 caused the psalmists to represent the community itself as 
 
252 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 speaking. Those who have sympathised with the identi- 
 fication of religion with national aspiration for which I 
 have been pleading in this book will regret, as an over- 
 individualisation, the extreme moral self-consciousness of 
 each private person, which has led him not only to forget 
 the nation and the State in his religion, but to convert his 
 religion chiefly into an instrument of preparation of him- 
 self and others for a life after death. 
 
 Despite the defects of the Hebrew Psalms, and the 
 many unlikenesses of temperament and national situation 
 to those of England which they depict, the ethical insight 
 preserved to us in the best of them and their literary merit 
 are such as to j ustif y the retention of most of them for 
 repetition at least once a year. But no one can deny that, 
 were lyrics at hand which embodied equal moral perception, 
 and yet at the same time depicted situations like our own 
 or, still better, reflected our own history and life we 
 could have no hesitation in making a place for them in the 
 Church Service. In the fact that such lyrics are at hand is 
 found the second great reason for a reduction of the number 
 of times which the Hebrew hymns should be sung in 
 our churches. 
 
 By way of transition from the Hebrew to the strictly 
 Anglican Psalms, it may be well to point out that there 
 exists an intermediate type, both Hebrew and English. 
 Modern Jews are still composing lyrics expressing the old 
 faith of the Hebrew prophets and embodying the eternal 
 passion of the Jew for his race the passion of censure 
 for its moral defects as the cause of its calamities, and of 
 pride and admiration for its pre-eminent gifts. And 
 some of these modern Hebrew psalmists are Englishmen, 
 speaking the language of Shakespeare, Milton and Burke 
 in a manner worthy of our highest tradition. Now, if we 
 are to retain Hebrew psalms and yet modify the Psalter, 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 253 
 
 why should we not incorporate some that have been 
 written in England, where the Jew at last has returned to 
 liberty and opportunity such as he has not known since 
 the destruction of the Temple two thousand years ago ? 
 Among modern psalms of this type is the poem entitled 
 " Israel," by Mr Zangwill. No one who is familiar with 
 it will dispute the soundness of my estimate of it ; nor 
 will anyone do so who can appreciate the terrific yet re- 
 strained power of such verses from it as these : 
 
 Hear, O Israel, Jehovah, the Lord our God, is One, 
 But we, Jehovah His people, are dual and so undone. 
 
 Slaves in eternal Egypts, baking their strawless bricks, 
 At ease in successive Zions, prating their politics ; 
 
 Faithful friends to our foemen, slaves to a scornful clique, 
 The only Christians in Europe turning the other cheek j 
 
 Wedded 'neath Hebrew awning, buried 'neath Hebrew sod, 
 Between not a dream of duty, never a glimpse of God ; 
 
 Tantalus-Proteus of Peoples, security comes from within ! 
 Where is the lion of Judah ? Wearing an ass's skin ! 
 
 Hear, O Israel, Jehovah, the Lord our God, is One, 
 But we, Jehovah His people, are dual and so undone. 
 
 Let it be remembered that, in proposing the intro- 
 duction of English lyrics into Divine Service, I am not 
 suggesting that the best of the Hebrew poetry should 
 be banished, but am only pleading that side by side with 
 it should be placed the corresponding works of our own 
 greatest writers. The enrichment of our service which 
 would result must be patent to all, the moment specimens 
 are given of the poetry which it is proposed to introduce. 
 
 Nothing is more beautiful than the nature-hymns to 
 
254 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 be found in the Psalms such as in the ic>4th and 
 loyth and these are wholly consistent with a naturalistic 
 view of religion. For although one may hesitate to 
 assert that the universal power of nature is itself a 
 personal spirit of infinite love and wisdom, one can 
 never deny that love and wisdom are the supreme realities 
 nay, that we have no reason to believe that nature 
 herself exists except in the perception of conscious beings. 
 Some of my critics have imagined that in speaking of 
 the relation of nature to spirit I have denied the trans- 
 cendence of spirit ; but this has been a misinterpretation 
 of my words. Nature, meaning the physical universe, 
 with all the manifold splendours and powers which the 
 Hebrew poets summoned to magnify and glorify the 
 Lord, constitutes not a reality above or outside of spiritual 
 agency as we know it in our own moral personality, but 
 within and subordinate. In asserting such transcendence, 
 however, we must never forget and those never will 
 who have been schooled in Immanuel Kant's Critique 
 of Pure Reason that Nature, the realm of Time, Space 
 and Causality, is the only sphere upon which or within 
 which spirit can apply her forms and categories, and 
 that therefore spirit as transcendent is empty and void. 
 Her fullness and reality are in her creation of the 
 ordered cosmos. Furthermore, it is in this same realm 
 of Time, Space and Causality that the conscience of 
 man, the dictate of spirit, requires that the ideals of 
 the moral vision shall be actualised. It is further to be 
 borne in mind that physical nature, deriving its 
 very framework from the spirit, is pre-eminently the 
 possession and the instrument of the moral ideal ; its 
 chief function is as a theatre for moral actualisation. 
 Therefore Hebrew poetry, in asserting that the heavens 
 declare the glory of God, is perfectly true to the point 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 255 
 
 of view which has been the presupposition of all the 
 thought in this volume. The very unity of nature is 
 itself a /^^/-necessity, and thus, again, nature is an 
 element subordinate to the moral ideal. In the second 
 place, the laws of nature, besides being the inexorable con- 
 ditions for the achievement of moral perfection, are, as 
 Emerson taught, of supreme import as illustration and 
 symbol for moral meanings. There is, therefore, nothing 
 supernaturalistic in the Hebrew nature-hymns. Spirit, 
 whose essence is the will to actualise the principles of 
 moral personality, is by right the Lord of nature, and is 
 in actuality its creator. But the creation is within, not 
 beyond itself ; and it itself, although transcendent in the 
 sense which I have made clear, nevertheless in its fullness 
 has no existence apart from the realm of Time, Space and 
 Causality. 
 
 With this philosophic explanation, to justify, from the 
 point of view of humanism, the retention of those Hebrew 
 psalms which seem to confirm the old-fashioned concep- 
 tions of an outside Creator, I would remind the reader 
 of the contrast between the physical nature and the 
 landscape familiar to the ancient Jews, and that known 
 to us as dwellers in the British Islands. Still more 
 significant, however, and justifying the addition of our 
 own nature-hymns to those of the Hebrew psalmists, is 
 our new and wholly characteristic feeling for landscape, to 
 which there is no parallel either in Greek or Hebrew 
 poetry. 
 
 As instances of the kind of nature-psalm which we 
 need in our ritual to supplement the existing Psalter, 
 I may be permitted to quote these two following pas- 
 sages from Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," as they 
 render arguments or attempts to convince the reader 
 superfluous : 
 
256 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 I have learned 
 
 To look on nature, not as in the hour 
 Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
 To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
 A lover of the meadows and the woods 
 And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
 From this green earth ; of all the mighty world 
 Of eye and ear, both what they half create, 
 And what perceive ; well pleased to recognise 
 In nature and the language of the sense, 
 The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
 The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 
 Of all my moral being. 
 
 Nature never did betray 
 The heart that loved her j 'tis her privilege, 
 Through all the years of this our life, to lead 
 From joy to joy : for she can so inform 
 The mind that is within us, so impress 
 With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
 With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
 Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
 Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
 The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
 Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
 Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold 
 Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon 
 Shine on thee in thy solitary walk ; 
 And let the misty mountain winds be free 
 To blow against thee. . . . 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 257 
 
 How striking is the contrast of attitude expressed in 
 these lines, to that of the psalmist who could cry : 
 
 Thou art clothed with honour and majesty. 
 
 Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment ; 
 
 Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain : 
 
 Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters ; 
 
 Who maketh the clouds his chariot ; 
 
 Who walketh upon the wings of the wind : 
 
 Who maketh winds his messengers ; 
 
 His ministers a flaming fire. 
 
 Both attitudes the attitude of Wordsworth and that 
 of the writer of this iO4th Psalm are of abiding 
 significance. The modern, the English sentiment cannot 
 supersede, but is needed to supplement, the other. 
 
 Another English nature-lyric akin to Wordsworth's, 
 yet adding a spiritual passionateness of its own, is Shelley's 
 " Ode to the West Wind." It depicts a Tuscan and not 
 an English landscape, but as only English eyes could 
 have seen it ; and in it the use of nature as symbol and 
 illustration is made to serve a spirit which only the 
 British rebellion against the anti-revolutionary reaction of 
 France could have engendered. In the " Ode to the 
 West Wind " it is the tortured spirit of the awakening 
 English democracy which cries : 
 
 Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : 
 What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 
 The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 
 
 Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 
 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, 
 My spirit ! be thou me, impetuous one ! 
 
 Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 
 Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ; 
 And, by the incantation of this verse, 
 
 '7 
 
258 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 
 Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
 Be through my lips to unawakened earth 
 
 The trumpet of a prophecy ! O Wind, 
 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ? 
 
 This citation from Shelley suggests another lyric of his, 
 which is not in the first instance a nature-hymn, yet is 
 that secondarily. The " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," 
 rising as it does to the transcendence of Platonic vision, 
 praises the invisible, spiritual, inward standard of all beauty 
 which is the creative cause of the derived loveliness of 
 physical nature : 
 
 Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven, 
 Or music by the night-wind sent 
 Through strings of some still instrument, 
 Or moonlight on a midnight stream, 
 
 Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 
 
 What are these lines but a poetic embodiment of the 
 idea which I have attempted to express above in meta- 
 physical phrase, as to the relation of spirit to the realm of 
 Time, Space and Causality, upon which the spirit not only 
 dictates her laws and forms, but into which she transfuses 
 the radiance of her own being ? 
 
 When the Church's leaders begin to do for England 
 a work analogous to that which the post-exilic poets did 
 for the second Temple of Jerusalem, they will also in- 
 corporate into our Divine Service some of the stanzas 
 from Shelley's "Adonais," among which they will not 
 fail to include these lines : 
 
 The One remains, the many change and pass ; 
 
 Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly ; 
 Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
 
 Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 
 Until Death tramples it to fragments. . . . 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 259 
 
 As was natural and right in an ethical ritual, the nature- 
 psalms of the Hebrews, although among the finest, were 
 far from being numerous ; and so it would be with 
 selections from English poetry. The dominant note of 
 the Psalms is, of course, the same as that of the Prophets 
 that the wrong-doings of the people are the ultimate 
 cause of the calamities that befall a nation, and repentance 
 for them is the point from which the return to security, 
 prosperity, peace and joyousness of life and thought must 
 begin. There is a blending, as I pointed out, and as 
 is instanced in Mr ZangwuTs " Israel," of passionate 
 rebuke with absolute loyalty and faith. There is so 
 much in English poetry which I might cite in illustration 
 of the same sentiments, and yet with a distinctively 
 English reference and association, that it is difficult for 
 me to restrain myself to the giving of typical instances 
 only. Whatever else may be chosen by the revisers 
 of the Prayer Book, nothing greater or more edify- 
 ing can be selected than the two following passages 
 from Tennyson's " Ode on the Death of the Duke of 
 Wellington " : 
 
 Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set 
 His Britain in blown seas and storming showers, 
 We have a voice with which to pay the debt 
 Of boundless love and reverence and regret 
 To those great men who fought and kept it ours. 
 And keep it ours, O God, from brute control ; 
 O Statesmen, guard us guard the eye, the soul 
 Of Europe ; keep our noble England whole, 
 And save the one true seed of freedom sown. 
 
 Yea, let all good things await 
 
 Him who cares not to be great 
 
 But as he saves or serves the State. 
 
 Not once or twice in our rough island-story, 
 
 The path of duty was the way to glory : 
 
260 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 He that walks it, only thirsting 
 
 For the right, and learns to deaden 
 
 Love of self, before his journey closes 
 
 He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting 
 
 Into glossy purples, which outredden 
 
 All voluptuous garden-roses. 
 
 Not once or twice in our fair island-story, 
 
 The path of duty was the way to glory : 
 
 He that, ever following her commands, 
 
 On with toil of heart and knees and hands, 
 
 Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won 
 
 His path upward, and prevail'd, 
 
 Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled 
 
 Are close upon the shining table-lands 
 
 To which our God Himself is moon and sun. 
 
 Such was he : his work is done. 
 
 But while the races of mankind endure, 
 
 Let his great example stand 
 
 Colossal, seen of every land, 
 
 And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure : 
 
 Till in all lands, and through all human story, 
 
 The path of duty be the way to glory. 
 
 As an illustration of a type of lyric different from 
 the foregoing, and yet altogether Biblical in spirit and 
 eminently fitted for chanting in church, is Milton's sublime 
 sonnet upon his own blindness : 
 
 When I consider how my light is spent, 
 
 Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 
 And that one talent which is death to hide, 
 
 Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 
 
 To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
 My true account, lest he, returning, chide ; 
 " Doth God exact day-labour, light denied ? " 
 
 I fondly ask : but Patience, to prevent 
 
 That murmur, soon replies, " God doth not need 
 Either man's work, or his own gifts ; who best 
 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best : his state 
 
 Is kingly ; thousands at his bidding speed, 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest : 
 They also serve who only stand and wait." 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 261 
 
 Before leaving lyrics which are distinctively English 
 as opposed to universal, I wish to cite two sonnets 
 from Wordsworth, and parts of three other poems, 
 which are verily psalms in the sense of the Hebrew 
 Psalter : 
 
 ... I know not which way I must look 
 
 For comfort, being, as I am, opprest 
 
 To think that now our life is only drest 
 
 For show j mean handiwork of craftsman, cook, 
 
 Or groom ! We must run glittering like a brook 
 
 In the open sunshine, or we are unblest : 
 
 The wealthiest man among us is the best : 
 
 No grandeur now in nature or in book 
 
 Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense, 
 
 This is idolatry j and these we adore j 
 
 Plain living and high thinking are no more : 
 
 The homely beauty of the good old cause 
 
 Is gone ; our peace, our fearful innocence, 
 
 And pure religion breathing household laws. 
 
 It is not to be thought of, that the Flood 
 
 Of British freedom, which to the open sea 
 
 Of the world's praise from dark antiquity 
 
 Hath flowed, " with pomp of waters, unwithstood,"- 
 
 Roused though it be full often to a mood 
 
 Which spurns the check of salutary bands, 
 
 That this most famous stream in bogs and sands 
 
 Should perish ; and to evil and to good 
 
 Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung 
 
 Armoury of the invincible knights of old : 
 
 We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
 
 That Shakespeare spake j the faith and morals hold 
 
 Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung 
 
 Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold. 
 
 The first of the other three poems, parts of which I wish 
 to cite, is this, from the Preface to William Blake's 
 "Milton": 
 
262 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 And did those feet in ancient time 
 
 Walk upon England's mountains green ? 
 
 And was the holy Lamb of God 
 
 On England's pleasant pastures seen ? 
 
 And did the Countenance Divine 
 Shine forth upon our clouded hills ? 
 
 And was Jerusalem builded here 
 Among these dark Satanic mills ? 
 
 Bring me my bow of burning gold, 
 
 Bring me my arrows of desire ; 
 Bring me my spear : O clouds, unfold ! 
 
 Bring me my chariot of fire ! 
 
 I will not cease from mental fight, 
 
 Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, 
 
 Till we have built Jerusalem 
 
 In England's green and pleasant land. 
 
 The second is W. E. Henley's poem in which are 
 found the stanzas : 
 
 What have I done for you, 
 
 England, my England ? 
 What is there I would not do, 
 
 England, my own ? 
 With your glorious eyes austere, 
 As the Lord were walking near, 
 Whispering terrible things and dear 
 
 As the Song on your bugles blown, 
 England 
 
 Round the world on your bugles blown ! 
 
 Ever the faith endures, 
 
 England, my England : 
 " Take and break us : we are yours, 
 
 " England, my own ! 
 " Life is good, and joy runs high 
 " Between English earth and sky : 
 " Death is death : but we shall die 
 
 " To the Song on your bugles blown, 
 " England 
 
 " To the stars on your bugles blown ! " 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 263 
 
 And the third is a poem by Mr Edward Carpenter, 
 which in its entirety may never be acceptable, and no 
 part of which possibly will be acceptable to the nation 
 as a whole until the conflicting interests which caused the 
 Boer War have disappeared from the face of the earth, 
 and only the lesson of that tragic event survives. To 
 its survival this poem itself, a typical part of which is the 
 following, will be a contributory influence : 
 
 For now I see thee like a great old tree, 
 
 A Mother of the forest, 
 
 Prone on the ground and hollow to the core, with branches 
 
 spread and stretched about the world. 
 And truly these thy seedlings scattered round 
 May spring and prosper, and even here and there 
 One of thy great arms elbowed in the earth, 
 Or severed from the trunk, may live again ; 
 But Thou thy tale of ancient glory is told : 
 T fear thou canst but die. 
 
 And better so, perhaps ; for what is good shall live. 
 The brotherhood of nations and of men 
 Comes on apace. 
 
 There is no occasion for limiting the canticles, hymns 
 and chants of the Church of England to expressions of 
 self-conscious nationalism. Our national consciousness 
 is to-day in so far at leisure from itself that it may well 
 dwell upon world-wide human duties and ends which 
 it shares in common with all mankind. English poetry 
 is rich with universal human wisdom, which, however, is 
 as yet locked away from the masses of the people, or 
 known to them only vaguely. What a boon it were if 
 every household of every class in the nation might know 
 by heart these lines from Tennyson's "Ancient Sage," 
 through being often reminded of them by the Anglican 
 Temple service ! 
 
264 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Let be thy wail and help thy fellow-men, 
 
 And make thy gold thy vassal, not thy king, 
 
 And fling free alms into the beggar's bowl, 
 
 And send the day into the darkened heart - 9 
 
 Nor list for guerdon in the voice of men, 
 
 A dying echo from a falling wall ; 
 
 Nor care for hunger hath the evil eye 
 
 To vex the noon with fiery gems, or fold 
 
 Thy presence in the silk of sumptuous looms ; 
 
 Nor roll thy viands on a luscious tongue, 
 
 Nor drown thyself with flies in honeyed wine ; 
 
 Nor thou be rageful, like a handled bee, 
 
 And lose thy life by usage of thy sting ; 
 
 Nor harm an adder thro' the lust for harm, 
 
 Nor make a snail's horn shrink for wantonness ; 
 
 And more think well ! Do-well will follow thought, 
 
 And in the fatal sequence of this world 
 
 An evil thought may soil thy children's blood ; 
 
 But curb the beast would cast thee in the mire, 
 
 And leave the hot swamp of voluptuousness 
 
 A cloud between the Nameless and thyself, 
 
 And lay thine uphill shoulder to the wheel, 
 
 And climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou 
 
 Look higher, then, perchance, thou mayest beyond 
 
 A hundred ever-rising mountain-lines, 
 
 And past the range of Night and Shadow see 
 
 The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day 
 
 Strike on the Mount of Vision ! 
 
 The same educational policy which would prompt the 
 incorporation of these magnificent lines in the Church's 
 ritual, would doubtless sanction the use of Matthew 
 Arnold's sonnet entitled " The Divinity," from which I 
 have already quoted the passage beginning " God's 
 wisdom and God's goodness," and the sonnet called "The 
 Better Part," which closes with the lines : 
 
 Was Christ a man like us ? Ah ! let us try 
 If we, then, too, can be such men as he ! 
 
 If it be questioned whether I have not, in proposing 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 265 
 
 these various modern poems for musical setting, over- 
 looked the problem of their suitability to be sung, I can 
 only answer that probably of them all none, upon first 
 appearance, would seem more difficult than the sonnet by 
 Matthew Arnold to which I have just referred. Yet 
 this sonnet, as pointed by Mr Norman O'Neill, has been 
 sung for years to one of the tunes in the Westminster 
 Chant Book at meetings of the West London Ethical 
 Society ; and no one could have heard it and not felt 
 that the singing, under a trained choir-master, brought 
 out, far more finely than mere reading would have done, 
 the variety and depth of meaning in the poem. And 
 each of the poems which I have cited, besides the many 
 others which I have selected but am unable here, from 
 lack of space, to reproduce, has been chosen because of 
 its fitness for singing, as well as because of its meaning 
 and purely literary quality. 
 
 Besides lyrics expressing universal human sentiments of 
 a general nature, there is need of others which shall present 
 vividly some one line of duty or some one aspect of 
 character or some one principle or law of the universe in 
 which we live. There are, unfortunately, most essential 
 aspects of virtue, conduct and truth which are almost 
 entirely omitted from the Old and New Testaments, and 
 are not incorporated and made effective in the rituals of 
 the Churches. Take, for instance, the one great duty 
 so supremely felt in modern times, and so necessary to 
 the prosperity, advancement and self-respect of a nation 
 of intellectual honesty in facing the fundamental 
 problems of thought and life. The Hebrew psalmists 
 and Christian hymn-writers seem never to have awakened 
 to a sense that one of the supreme religious duties of a 
 rational being is to think for himself and to speak out 
 the truth that is in him. Yet no virtue could be more 
 
266 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 English or more loved and lauded by Englishmen. In 
 order that this special aspect of virtue should be in- 
 corporated into our Divine Service, the proverbs and 
 aphorisms of those who have been its champions and 
 martyrs should, after the fashion of those who con- 
 structed the psalms and proverbs in the Bible, be 
 gathered together. Thus the various parts would rein- 
 force one another. In lieu of anything more fitting, the 
 following words might be sung to serve this end : 
 
 Speak every man truth with his neighbour. 
 
 Speak what you think now, in hard words, 
 
 And to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks 
 
 In hard words again. 
 
 Wait not to be backed by numbers ; 
 
 Wait not till you are sure of an echo from the crowd. 
 
 The fewer the voices on the side of Truth, 
 
 The more distinct must be your own. 
 
 Truth is a thing to be shouted from the housetops. 
 
 March to the tune of the voice of her, 
 
 Breathing the balm of her breath, 
 
 Loving the light of her skies. 
 
 Blessed is he on whose eyes 
 
 Dawns but her light as he dies ; 
 
 Blessed are ye that make choice of her, 
 
 Equal to life and to death. 
 
 Akin in spirit and in tonic effect would prove the 
 following lines from George Eliot : 
 
 Never falter ; no great deed is done 
 
 By falterers who wait for certainty. 
 
 No good is certain but the steadfast mind. 
 
 The undivided will to seek the good 
 
 'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings 
 
 A human music from th' indifferent air. 
 
 The greatest gift the hero leaves his race 
 
 Is to have been a hero. 
 
 Say we fail, 
 
 We feed the high tradition of the world, 
 
 And leave our spirit in our children's breasts. 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 267 
 
 A great and fundamental truth of modern life, the 
 presupposition of all scientific research and the basis of 
 all education, is the uniformity of law throughout nature. 
 Yet this idea is a monopoly, thus far, of a very small 
 minority of the nation of those who have had the op- 
 portunity, or the wisdom to seize the opportunity, of 
 scientific discipline. The masses of the people have 
 no more sense of natural law to-day than they had 
 a thousand years ago. " Unfortunately," says Dr 
 McDougall, in a paper entitled "A Practicable Eugenic 
 Suggestion," published in the Sociological Papers, "con- 
 ventional religious teaching and the classical education of 
 our public schools too often conspire to deprive the 
 Englishman of any effective belief in natural causation ; 
 so that, except in the simplest cases of physical causation, 
 he is not accustomed to seek, or to believe in the existence 
 of, natural causes. Especially common is this attitude 
 towards all large processes in which hidden causes work 
 through long periods of time ; and it is no exaggeration 
 to say that for many, perhaps most, men historical events 
 merely happen, and history is, and should be, the mere 
 chronicle of such happenings." It is the Church's duty 
 to incorporate the idea of inexorable causality into its 
 revised Psalter, for it is palpably the function of the 
 Church to educate the people of the nation to the working 
 hypotheses of all discovery and all invention, moral or 
 physical. This uniformity of law is an idea not only 
 for specialists and scholars, but one which all men in a 
 democratic nation must be disciplined to apply. It is the 
 ruling principle which restrains imagination from fatal 
 flights, and yet strengthens and extends its power of 
 wing. Happily, long ago it inspired that great prophet 
 of Anglican nationalism, Richard Hooker, to immortal 
 utterance. The following words from Hooker, express- 
 
268 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 ing this presupposition of all science, are as melodious 
 and majestic in language as they are sane, profound and 
 true in thought : 
 
 If Nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether, 
 
 though it were but for a while, the observation of her 
 
 own laws ; 
 If those principal and mother elements, whereof all things 
 
 in this world are made, 
 
 Should lose the qualities which now they have ; 
 If the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads 
 Should loosen and dissolve itself ; 
 
 If celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, 
 And by irregular volubility turn themselves any way as it 
 
 might happen : 
 If the prince of the lights of heaven, which now as a giant 
 
 doth run his unwearied course, 
 Should as it were through a languishing faintness begin to 
 
 stand and to rest himself ; 
 
 If the moon should wander from her beaten way, 
 The times and seasons of the year blend themselves by 
 
 disordered and confused mixture, 
 The winds breathe out their last gasp, 
 The clouds yield no rain, 
 The earth be defeated of heavenly influence, 
 The fruits of the earth pine away as children at the 
 
 withered breasts of their mother, no longer able to 
 
 yield them relief; 
 What would become of man himself, whom these things 
 
 now do all serve ? 
 
 Of Law there can be no less acknowledged 
 Than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the 
 
 harmony of the world ; 
 
 All things in heaven and earth do her homage : 
 The very least as feeling her care, 
 And the greatest as not exempted from her power ; 
 Men and creatures of what condition soever, 
 Though each in different sort and manner, 
 Yet all with uniform consent, 
 Admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy. 
 
 Another idea which is nowhere adequately suggested 
 
ENGLISH POETRY AND THE PSALTER 269 
 
 in the Bible or in the present Book of Common Prayer 
 is that of fellowship in the inner life as a source of moral 
 strength ; and yet, according to the principle followed 
 and generally justified by the adaptors and constructors 
 of manuals of religious worship, one could place together 
 great sentences expressive of this principle, which might 
 well be chanted by every congregation in the land. Such 
 a composition, which has already proved its moral efficacy 
 in congregational singing as a chant, is the following : 
 
 Fellowship in the moral life is salvation : Infinite is the 
 
 help that man can yield to man : 
 It is our moral nature longing to be fed and strengthened 
 
 that urges us into fellowship : 
 Fellowships we need, that will deify Duty, and worship 
 
 Goodness as a god. 
 Forsooth, such fellowship is heaven : and lack of fellowship 
 
 is hell. 
 
 Fellowship is life, and lack of fellowship is death : 
 And the deeds that we do upon the earth it is for fellowship's 
 
 sake that we do these deeds. 
 Oh, what is heaven but the fellowship of minds 
 That each may stand against the world by its own meek and 
 
 incorruptible will ? 
 
 The tidal wave of deeper souls into our inmost being rolls, 
 And lifts us unawares out of all meaner cares. 
 
 Akin to the foregoing, and yet supplementary, because 
 it more vividly presents the idea of the unity of man- 
 kind as a spiritual organism, is the following series of 
 verses, taken chiefly from the Bible : 
 
 Who is weak, and I am not weak : who is offended and I 
 
 burn not ? 
 For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to 
 
 himself. 
 Whoever degrades another, degrades me ; and whatsoever 
 
 is done or said, returns at last to me. 
 I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty, 
 
 and ye gave me drink ; 
 
270 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 I was a stranger, and ye took me in : naked, and ye 
 
 clothed me ; 
 I was sick, and ye visited me : I was in prison, and ye 
 
 came unto me. 
 When saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee ; or thirsty, 
 
 and gave thee drink ? Or when saw we thee sick or 
 
 in prison, and came unto thee ? 
 Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these 
 
 my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 
 The same heart beats in every human breast. 
 
 Someone observing the part played by popular political 
 songs in driving James II. "out of three kingdoms," 
 invented the now current adage, " Let me write a nation's 
 songs, and let who will make its laws." Unhappily, the 
 songs which spring spontaneously into popularity and 
 move the masses to some decision, act only in great crises, 
 and in the moment of intense excitement ; and they are 
 never such as rebuke the populace for their own short- 
 comings or instruct them in their own duties. Accord- 
 ingly, the adage which will become the motto of the wise 
 statesman of the future will be, " Let me write a nation's 
 ritual, and let who will make its laws." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND THE LECTIONARY 
 
 "THE Divine Service," say Procter and Frere, in their 
 volume entitled A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, 
 " mainly exists for the purpose of the orderly recitation 
 of the Psalter and reading of the Bible." Thus it comes 
 about that the Book of Common Prayer, as it were, con- 
 tains the Bible within itself, and that whoever writes of 
 the one must be continually treating of the other ; in the 
 Prayer Book the Bible is presented from the standpoint 
 of Anglican idealism. 
 
 Hence it was necessary that in this volume I should 
 especially dwell upon the Ten Commandments and the 
 Lord's Prayer ; for these so the Prayer Book presup- 
 poses express the secret of the Old and the spirit of the 
 New Testament ; and in the very pre-eminence given to 
 them we find proof that to the Church, even in its Pro- 
 testant form, not all parts of the Bible were of equal 
 significance, and that the teacher felt that he must use his 
 own judgment in selecting the elements which he counted 
 vital. It is this same principle, carried further, which has 
 guided my criticism of the Psalter. But hitherto, un- 
 fortunately, there has also prevailed another and a con- 
 flicting idea ; for, while it has been recognised that the 
 
 parts of the Bible differ in value, it has at the same time 
 
 271 
 
272 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 been maintained that, although all may not be equally 
 precious, nevertheless any part is of greater worth than 
 the best portion of any other literature, except those 
 compositions which have been directly inspired by the 
 Church. 
 
 The idea of literary selection which prompted the 
 Church to bring to the forefront the Ten Commandments 
 and the Lord's Prayer led it to choose from the Gospel 
 of Luke the superb canticles known as the Magnificat 
 and the Nunc Dimittis, and assign them a distinguished 
 place in Divine Service. Equally fine in discrimination 
 was the judgment which caused the Te Deum (composed 
 by Niceta, the missionary bishop of Remesiana in Dacia, 
 at the end of the fourth century) and the Apostles', the 
 Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds to be preserved and 
 used regularly by the Church. But the conflicting idea 
 that everything in the Psalter is worth reading once a 
 month and everything in the Bible once a year is a 
 notion which cannot be defended from the point of view 
 of the spiritual education of a people. There was more 
 justification for it before the ethical import of Greek 
 literature was appreciated, before modern science had 
 begun to compel Christians to recognise as a virtue the 
 intellectual duty of thinking for oneself and speaking out 
 one's deepest convictions, and before modern nations had 
 produced literatures of their own, which, if not absolutely 
 equal in ethical insight to the Bible, nevertheless, because 
 of their nativeness, have more power as instruments of 
 instruction and inspiration than a remoter literature could 
 have. The uniqueness of the Bible as a divine revelation 
 can no longer be maintained. 
 
 For two reasons, then, the Lectionary must be 
 thoroughly overhauled. First, some of the passages 
 appointed to be read as lessons are not worth the time 
 
LITERATURE AND THE LECTIONARY 273 
 
 they take. To justify this criticism by citing instances 
 is beyond my purpose here ; but in any case I may 
 assume that the general public share my judgment. I 
 shall not, therefore, attempt, any more than I did with 
 the Psalms, to suggest which parts should be omitted. 
 Secondly, much material from extra-Biblical literature 
 will be found worthy to replace Bible selections ; and the 
 quantity so chosen will be a chief factor in determining how 
 much of the Bible shall be excised from the Lectionary. 
 
 Perhaps I ought in this connection to refer to a pro- 
 blem which will confront the revisers of the Prayer Book, 
 in connection with the quantity of sacred Scripture 
 whether Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or of modern national 
 origin which should be comprised within the Lectionary 
 for a year. The Roman Catholic custom of reciting the 
 Psalter once every week was abandoned by the Church of 
 England, because only monks, friars, nuns and secular 
 priests could attend the many daily services of the Church. 
 They, whose profession was religion, had heretofore con- 
 stituted an adequate number of participants ; but when the 
 monasteries and convents of England were abolished and 
 the laity came into ascendency, it became patent that a 
 weekly recitation of the Psalter was impossible. The 
 public were too busy with other affairs ; and on this 
 account the number of services each day was reduced to 
 two. But even Morning and Evening Prayer have, as 
 an actual fact, been found too much ; so that the Lection- 
 ary, arranged on the basis of daily lessons from the Bible, 
 has not secured the hearing of the whole Bible once every 
 year by even the most devout Church-people. 
 
 Many present-day tendencies within the Church itself 
 show that both the recitation of the Psalter and the read- 
 ing of the Bible must be adapted to the life of the people. 
 If it be true that even devout worshippers are not likely 
 
 18 
 
274 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 to attend more than three services a week, it is im- 
 portant that the most edifying and illuminating passages 
 from the Bible should be chosen for reading at these. 
 The public must not be sacrificed to the Bible, but if it 
 be a sacrifice the Bible-reading must be curtailed in such 
 a manner that the best parts shall be made accessible to 
 the listening worshippers. On the ground of three 
 services a week, much more than half of the Bible would 
 have to be omitted from an annual Lectionary ; and if 
 the still further principle of incorporating selections from 
 the literatures of other nations were adopted, still more of 
 the Bible would have to be left out, in order to provide 
 space for these ; or if the two lessons from the Bible were 
 to be retained, it would be necessary to omit some other 
 part of the service. 
 
 The idea that the Divine Service exists mainly for the 
 purpose of the orderly recitation of the Psalter and read- 
 ing of the Bible seems to me wholly justifiable in principle 
 from the point of view of national education. Once drop 
 the notion that every part of the Bible is worth introduc- 
 ing into the service, and allow other literatures to compete, 
 and there can be no objection to it at least in the minds 
 of those who, from acquaintance with the power of litera- 
 ture in influencing the religious life, know that no 
 instrument more potent can form a part of religious ritual. 
 
 The British public have been prepared for a saner 
 valuation of the Bible as a whole, and of its parts 
 relatively to one another, by the writings of Matthew 
 Arnold, and chiefly by his famous dictum that the Bible 
 should be read in the same way as other books are read, 
 and judged by the same standards of appreciation. 
 Arnold maintained that the extremest Agnostic, sceptic, 
 or rationalist, approaching the Hebrew literature in this 
 way, would find that it stood comparison with that of any 
 
LITERATURE AND THE LECTIONARY 275 
 
 other nation ; and undoubtedly he was right. Even if 
 regarded only as poetry merely as legend the Bible 
 will for ever retain its pre-eminence. No so-called 
 superstition, no crudity of speculative theory, no mis- 
 interpretation of historic fact, on the part of its authors, can 
 invalidate its claim to supremacy in literature. 
 
 In four particulars it stands the most rigorous tests, 
 and comes out of the ordeal with even greater splendour 
 than before. In the first place, the finest parts of the 
 Bible show a knowledge, on the part of the authors, of the 
 workings of the human heart, they reveal an insight 
 into human nature, which out-Shakespeares Shakespeare. 
 From lack of space, I instance only one specimen the 
 story of Cain and Abel, in the fourth chapter of Genesis. 
 There, in a compass almost microscopic, is revealed not 
 only the broad earth of our human experience but the 
 overarching heavens of the moral ideal. Whoever 
 wrote the story knew the most hidden secrets of the 
 human heart ; but he also manifested the three other 
 qualities which constitute the marks of all truly great 
 literature. The story of Cain and Abel, in the second 
 place, shows a knowledge of the working of the social 
 mind, of public opinion, of the passions of the crowd. 
 The form in which this knowledge is presented is poetic, 
 and therefore we do not speak of the author of the story 
 as a sociologist ; yet one will find here in a nutshell more 
 sociology more knowledge of social laws and institu- 
 tions than in the works either of Auguste Comte or of 
 Herbert Spencer. 
 
 But along with the psychology and the sociology of 
 the story moves with equal strength and cogency the 
 moral judgment of the writer. It is sometimes said by 
 persons with a prejudice against the Bible that the morality 
 at least of the Old Testament is brutal as compared with 
 
276 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 that of our day, and that the book therefore is antiquated 
 as a text-book of practical ethics. But as seen in the 
 story of Cain and Abel, and indeed in all its greatest 
 passages, the moral judgment revealed is of abiding 
 value and of universal application. Note, for instance, 
 how modern nay, how more than up-to-date at the 
 beginning of the twentieth century is the probing 
 question made to emanate from the mouth of God : 
 " Where is Abel thy brother ? " And note, further, 
 when Cain fails to justify his deed, the placing of a 
 moral and social boycott upon him because he had denied 
 the brotherly bond ; but forthwith a restriction of the 
 boycott to moral censure, and the condemnation of any- 
 one who might attempt on behalf of the community to 
 assume the r61e of avenger by taking blood for blood. 
 
 The fourth characteristic is akin to the third, and yet 
 distinct and of equal significance. There is in this story, 
 and throughout the Bible, not only a sound ethical judg- 
 ment, but an emphasis placed upon morality which exalts 
 it into the supreme factor in life, setting it up as God, 
 and representing the power of righteousness as constitut- 
 ing the determining element in the destiny of nations. 
 
 As an instance of the psychology of the Bible, I would 
 cite first the fact that Cain is represented as slaying his 
 brother in the heat of argument with him, and then 
 the insolent retort of Cain " I know not : am I my 
 brother's keeper ? " to the probing question of the social 
 conscience : "Where is Abel thy brother ?" Still further, 
 witness the profound insight into the workings of the 
 human heart revealed in the depicting of Cain, who at 
 first was defiant of the social bond, as whining for mercy 
 the moment he finds that he is to be ostracised from the 
 fellowship of men. 
 
 As a specimen of the sociology of the Bible, I would 
 
LITERATURE AND THE LECTIONARY 277 
 
 instance the judgment of the writer of this Cain and 
 Abel story in making an economic dispute the cause of 
 the first murder. A class-war, a conflict between two 
 types of industry, an older and a newer, is made the 
 occasion of the tragedy. Cain's insistence that he was not 
 his brother's keeper makes him the founder of the 
 Manchester School of Political Economy. What is the 
 exclamatory assertion " Am I my brother's keeper ? " 
 but the whole doctrine of laissez-faire both its spirit 
 and its economic science in five words ? Observe also, 
 as characteristic of Bible ethics, the claim that a man is 
 responsible for another grown-up man, presumably his 
 equal, and the head of a competing industry, and must 
 render account for that other's well-being. The humani- 
 tarianism of the nineteenth century boasted that it was 
 full of mercy and care for the feeble and the oppressed ; 
 but the Bible begins with the doctrine not of mercy but 
 of social justice of responsibility not for inferiors but 
 even for equals or superiors. 
 
 I have taken one instance only of the psychology, 
 sociology, ethics and religion of the Bible ; but this story 
 of Cain and Abel is typical of it, at its best, from Genesis 
 to Revelation. The psychology, sociology, ethics and 
 ethical religion of the Bible constitute the substance of 
 the Jewish and Christian revelation ; nor have we out- 
 grown the need of it. Hence it is that, if we go to the 
 Bible as we would to any other book, we are sure to 
 become Bible men if with a different insight from that 
 of its least critical devotees in the past, nevertheless to 
 an equal degree. 
 
 But Matthew Arnold's dictum is not adequate ; it 
 suffers from lack of qualification. We ought not in any 
 full sense to go to the Bible as men have been 
 accustomed to going to any other book ; for they have 
 
278 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 not gone to other books with the right disposition and 
 purpose. They have turned to literature as, according to 
 Francis Bacon, they have " entered into a desire of 
 learning and knowledge " : 
 
 Sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive 
 appetite ; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety 
 and delight - 9 sometimes for ornament and reputation ; and 
 sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradic- 
 tion j and most times for lucre and profession ; and seldom 
 sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the 
 benefit and use of men : as if there were sought in knowledge 
 a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit j or 
 a terrace for a wandering and variable mind to walk up 
 and down with a fair prospect ; or a tower of state for a 
 proud mind to raise itself upon ; or a fort or commanding 
 ground for strife and contention ; or a shop for profit or 
 sale ; and not a rich storehouse for the glory of the 
 Creator and the relief of man's estate. 
 
 Were people to accustom themselves to reading the 
 Bible as in general they have read other books, the last 
 state of those people would be worse than the first. What 
 Arnold should have said was that people should read the 
 Bible as they ought to read any other book though in order 
 to cite an example of how they ought to read any other 
 book, probably he would have been compelled to instance 
 the way in which they have hitherto read the Bible ; and 
 then his dictum would have been merely tautological. 
 The Bible is the only book which men have read " to the 
 glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate " ; and 
 the dictum which people need to-day even more than 
 Matthew Arnold's is that we should go to all other books 
 as devout people have hitherto been accustomed to go 
 only to the Bible. Even the most bigoted fetish- 
 worshipper of the Bible would lose his narrowness were 
 he to make this principle the rule of his study of all 
 
LITERATURE AND THE LECTIONARY 279 
 
 literature. We are not to bring the Old and New 
 Testaments down to the level of other books, but to lift 
 other books to the high plane on which only the Bible 
 has always been placed. 
 
 So different from the Bible in superficial qualities is 
 what we call secular literature that one is at first unable to 
 detect that it contains just as profound a divine revelation 
 as the Old and New Testaments, and that its revelation is in 
 fundamental character the same, although in special import 
 it supplements, and does not repeat, that of the Bible. 
 Nobody will deny, for instance, that throughout English 
 history and English life there has been a gradual deepening 
 of insight into the essential nature and requirements of 
 social justice, and that these requirements have, very slowly 
 yet surely, been more and more incorporated into the actual 
 institutions and character of the English people. Yet 
 what was the New Testament but a new insight into 
 social justice, the inwardness of truly spiritual religion, the 
 humility and dignity of man, and the hope of the quick 
 coming of justice through the spiritual co-operation of 
 those who worshipped it as essential deity ? And if this 
 constituted it a divine revelation, must not the same 
 qualities gain for English literature also the title of Holy 
 Scripture ? 
 
 A part of the special divine revelation in English 
 literature and life is revealed in the very sentences which 
 I have just quoted from Francis Bacon's Advancement 
 of Learning. The application of science, the mastery 
 over nature by verified knowledge, for the relief of man's 
 estate was a revelation which the world never before had 
 had. It is essentially a modern idea the greatest idea of 
 modern times and the source of all other modern ideas. 
 It marks the historic turning of the human mind away 
 from a supernaturalistic towards a naturalistic theology. 
 
280 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Theology of the old kind such was the truth revealed 
 must inevitably be barren ; only empirical science could be 
 fruitful ; and that fruit, said Bacon, was forbidden to be 
 used except for the relief of man's estate. Here is a 
 distinctively English divine revelation, yet one of universal 
 value, which has since been gratefully accepted by all the 
 thinking peoples of the world. Is it, then, conceivable that 
 the English people will continue to overlook Bacon's 
 Advancement of Learning as a part of Holy Scripture, and 
 for ever refuse to admit into Divine Service, as one of 
 the lessons for the day, the very passage from which I 
 have quoted ? 
 
 The existence of the divine revelation in English life 
 and literature is a great and vital fact, requiring a volume 
 in itself ; for it is one that has been almost universally 
 overlooked, though its evidences are abundant. 
 
 I have cited but one aspect, but there are at least six 
 or seven distinct lines of new insight into vital truth and 
 duty which have come to the world first and chiefly 
 through " God's Englishmen." I might cite as a part of 
 the world's Holy Scripture, Milton's Areopagitica. First 
 to us, in any full sense, was revealed the necessity of 
 liberty as a condition of virtue and virility of character, of 
 happiness and of happiness-producing activity ; and first in 
 this pamphlet of Milton's was treasured up and preserved 
 with immortal power this divine message to the world. 
 I might cite as another equally important portion of 
 the divine revelation, Edmund Burke's Thoughts on the 
 Present "Discontents^ his speeches on American Taxation 
 and on Conciliation with America, his Letter to the 
 Sheriffs of Bristol, and his Letter to a Noble Lord. Here 
 as nowhere else is set forth with imperishable eloquence 
 the moral responsibility of the politician, as opposed to 
 the Machiavellian doctrine of the superiority of the State 
 
LITERATURE AND THE LECTIONARY 281 
 
 to considerations of justice, which had been dominant 
 the world over. Is the Anglican Church to continue to 
 omit passages from Milton and Burke, simply because 
 they do not happen to be found in Isaiah or Paul ? 
 
 I have not space for the citing of the other messages of 
 divine revelation in English literature ; but I may at least 
 allude to one. That it is pre-eminently an English message 
 was recently brought home to me in reading a book by a 
 famous German writer of devotional works Pastor Hilty. 
 He had been speaking of various women saints of the 
 Catholic Church, and then went on to declare that there 
 have been in modern times Protestant women of equal 
 strength and beauty of character. Was it an accident 
 that all his instances were Englishwomen Elizabeth 
 Fry, Florence Nightingale, Catherine and Eva Booth 
 and Miss Hobhouse ? It is through English history, in 
 English life and English literature as witness Elizabeth 
 Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh and John Stuart 
 Mill's Subjection of Women that respect for the moral 
 personality of woman and recognition of the larger 
 sphere which her spiritual gifts require have first been 
 revealed to the world as essentials of morality and of true 
 religion. Scarcely a hint of this is to be found in the 
 Bible, any more than of salvation to man by the application 
 of science to the relief of his estate, or of the necessity of 
 liberty, or of the application of the principles of ordinary 
 morality to the dealings of States with one another. If 
 we do not find place in the Lectionary of our Divine 
 Service for the expression of these truths as embodied in 
 existing literature, they must be omitted altogether ; for 
 it is not conceivable that any Commission consisting of 
 bishops of the Church, even if some were as gifted as 
 Cranmer himself, could set them forth in a manner com- 
 parable to that of such writers as I have mentioned. 
 
282 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 But in pleading for an incorporation of passages from 
 English literature into the Lectionary, I would not seem 
 to overlook certain limitations which make the prose and 
 poetry of our nation of itself quite inadequate. In the 
 first place, English history has never yet been written 
 from the point of view from which Hebrew statesmen 
 wrote, adapted and compiled Jewish history. The differ- 
 ence does not consist so much in the absence of any bent 
 or trend or purpose on the part of English historians as 
 in the fact that theirs has not been the distinctively Jewish 
 purpose which was to trace, as of supreme importance, 
 the growth of social justice and universal morality as a 
 national asset. Many English historians have had no 
 ideal motive at all ; they have been interested in the sen- 
 sational or dramatic incidents of national life on their own 
 account ; or, like Macaulay, they have stood for the 
 principles and aims of a certain political party. That 
 party was, of course, not without ethical character and did 
 not omit to seek an ethical justification for itself ; but its 
 main purpose was the establishment of a special machinery 
 of politics rather than the spread of universal ethical 
 idealism among the masses of the nation. 
 
 Indeed, one may fairly give as the chief objection to 
 historians of the Liberal school that they have talked 
 much of progress, much of the forward movement, but 
 they have omitted to indicate what the goal was, motion 
 towards which constituted progress. To talk of progress 
 without specifying the outlines of the end to be attained 
 is to use a term which persons of diametrically opposed 
 ideals may equally apply to their own peculiar conceptions. 
 Two historians, both using the word " progress," will be 
 writing conflicting accounts and exercising antagonistic 
 influences if the ideal of the one is, let us say, a benignant 
 aristocracy, and of the other an enlightened social demo- 
 
LITERATURE AND THE LECTION ARY 283 
 
 cracy. Naturally, as I have been advocating a develop- 
 ment of the nation towards social democracy and the 
 spread of scientific habits of mind, I can but feel that the 
 great need of the hour is the re-examination of all the 
 materials furnished by the national records for a thousand 
 years, and a selection of all tendencies and events, on the 
 principle that their importance is in proportion as they 
 make for social democracy, freedom of thought, and a 
 knowledge of the laws of man and the universe. 
 
 In the absence of English history thus written, the 
 Bible has an added claim upon us. And, besides, it may 
 be said that there is one special reason which will for ever 
 give the Old and New Testaments a just precedence over 
 modern literature a reason in addition to the fact that they 
 have already for a thousand years exercised a formative 
 influence upon the idealism of every nation of the West. 
 But in order to explain this reason, I must first lay down 
 in briefest outline some of the chief effects which I con- 
 ceive that the Church, through her Divine Service, ought 
 to produce upon the minds of the whole public. After 
 having specified these effects, it will, I believe, be easy for 
 me to show that they can best be accomplished by a 
 national familiarity with the Bible from a freely critical, 
 scientific and historical, as well as ethical, point of view. 
 
 One of the chief ends to be achieved by church services 
 is that they shall create in the minds of all adults a domi- 
 nating sense of the universal validity, inexorableness and 
 reality of the law of cause and effect. It is nationally 
 expedient that the people of a democracy should realise 
 vividly that no event, mental or physical, happens except 
 as the resultant of the sum-total, mental and physical, 
 of the ordered cosmos ; they must know that in every 
 particular the present is the child of the past and the parent 
 of the future ; that nothing happens which is not due to 
 
284 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 precedent events, and that because we cannot trace any 
 given event to its " secondary causes " is no ground for 
 thinking that it was not due to such causes. 
 
 A second desideratum is that all the men and women 
 of our country shall be so cultivated intellectually as 
 never to regard the events of physical nature as signs or 
 portents, or as fraught with occult psychic influences or 
 with hints and messages to guide men in the carrying out 
 of human desires. They must feel no possible interest 
 of an astrological as distinct from an astronomical nature, 
 or of an alchemistic as opposed to a chemical, or of a 
 spiritistic or psychical-research order as opposed to the 
 most rigorously scientific psychology. 
 
 Thirdly, it is necessary that the people of England 
 under the discipline of the Church shall abandon all 
 belief in the significance of dreams. They must not 
 think as many of them do to this day that dreams may 
 furnish clues to one's spiritual destiny or contain revela- 
 tions of an unseen world, and therefore should be 
 respected and followed in preference to the perceptions 
 and thoughts of waking life ; but they must be trained to 
 count the mental phenomena of sleep as by-products of 
 general psychic and physical conditions, and as having no 
 meaning except as symptoms of these. 
 
 A fourth end which should dominate the choice of 
 readings for the edification of the people when the 
 Lectionary is revised, is that the people shall come to 
 perceive the organic spiritual unity of human beings in 
 society, and shall learn to count all inward, spiritual 
 experiences aspirations, enthusiasms and regrets as 
 being reactions of the soul of each against the influences 
 which stream in upon him often at the moment alto- 
 gether unperceived from the corporate life and thought 
 of society. 
 
LITERATURE AND THE LECTION ARY 285 
 
 Fifthly, accompanying such effects of the Lectionary 
 should be the production of a desire in the heart of the 
 people to make the service of the spiritual organism of 
 society the chief end of existence, and an imperative sense 
 of the responsibility of following those lines of conduct 
 and training those dispositions of the will which contribute 
 to the efficiency, health and perpetuity of families, cities 
 and States, in so far as these embody the principles of 
 organic life. 
 
 And, sixthly, it is of the first importance to every nation, 
 as I have sought to show in many connections, that the 
 people should accept as the essence of true religion rever- 
 ence for the ideal of a perfected humanity and devotion 
 to the cause of its universal realisation upon earth. 
 
 My own experience has shown me that the higher criti- 
 cism of the Old and New Testaments, as embodied, let us 
 say, in the method, spirit and results given in the Encyclo- 
 pedia Biblica^ constitutes the finest conceivable discipline 
 in concrete reasoning, in using the moral judgment, in 
 cultivating a sense of literary proportion, in realising the 
 sublime human purpose in history, in respecting and 
 loving high types of character, in fostering a spirit of self- 
 sacrifice to the cause of social justice and of human health 
 and happiness, of mastery over nature and of devotion to 
 ideals. 
 
 It is quite possible that, in the past, Bible-reading has 
 been the chief means by which effects the very opposite 
 of the first four I have specified have been achieved. 
 The Bible has been used to teach that the order of nature 
 might be continually interrupted by events due to no 
 precedent finite happening ; that physical occurrences 
 might be signs and portents, warnings and hints ; that 
 dreams, at least in the past, have often been sent from 
 some transcendent sphere as revelations or forebodings of 
 
286 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 danger or as prophecies of success to mortals ; and that 
 one's deepest moral perceptions and aspirations emanate 
 not from within the spiritual organism of society, but 
 from beyond it and uncaused by it. It may seem para- 
 doxical to assert that the book which has best served to 
 produce these unscientific and anti-social effects is also 
 the very book which can best produce the directly opposite 
 ones. Yet upon second thought it will be found that, 
 if in the hands of a teacher who believed in the occurrence 
 of events not naturally caused, the Bible was efficacious 
 in producing such beliefs, it will be equally so in the 
 contrary direction, when the teacher's object is to instil a 
 belief in the universality of the law of cause and effect. 
 For the Bible furnishes in its stories the very material, 
 by reasoning critically about which men have been led to 
 reject miracles altogether. Now, the scientific habit of 
 thinking will not be developed throughout the nation, 
 if all reference to miracles and the history of so-called 
 supernatural events is barred out from systematic exami- 
 nation ; indeed, to hear nothing of pre-scientific views of 
 life is not the way to become fortified against them. On 
 the contrary, it is necessary early to become acquainted, 
 and to grow year by year more intimately familiar, with 
 them. I will not say, as many do, that it is necessary in 
 early childhood to believe them ; but it would certainly do 
 no harm if at the beginning they were believed, provided 
 the clergy constantly encouraged the free critical, scientific 
 and ethical examination of them. 
 
 I have only space to give briefest mention to the 
 ethical and religious advantages of reading the Bible in 
 church, when, concurrently, it is expounded in the pulpit 
 and in Bible-classes from the new point of view. 
 Religious instruction should always reveal not only the 
 inner moral sanctions the satisfaction of doing right and 
 
LITERATURE AND THE LECTIONARY 287 
 
 the love of right for its own sake and for the sake of 
 humanity but side by side with these highest motives, 
 and always interpenetrating them, should be presented 
 politics, history, biography and literature, in order that the 
 people shall never fall into the error of imagining that the 
 judgment of right and wrong, and the desire to do right 
 and eschew evil, are activities that spring into the mind 
 full-grown from some transcendent source or from some 
 inmost centre of the isolated individual. They must be 
 continually reminded that morality has been a slow social 
 growth, due to struggle and experience in families, cities 
 and States. Now, the Bible, more than any other 
 national literature, presents the growth of social justice 
 through the long centuries of a nation's struggles, and 
 the evolution through experience of human insight into 
 the requirements of social justice. 
 
 When English history is written from this Bible point 
 of view, it may deserve to supersede the Bible, if as well 
 done ; but even then it could not be of equal value with 
 the higher criticism of the Old and New Testaments as 
 a discipline in concrete reasoning and as a warning against 
 belief in dreams and occultism. 
 
 No historian denies that one of the greatest religious 
 and intellectual events in the history of England occurred 
 when an excellent translation of the Bible into the 
 vernacular was made accessible to the nation at large. 
 But it may be safe to prophesy that it will be a still greater 
 event of the same order when the preachers of England 
 see fit to disclose to the people the method, spirit and 
 purpose of the higher criticism of the Old and New 
 Testaments. The mere translation of the Bible did not 
 introduce a new method of finding truth ; and, unhappily, 
 the old one which was then in vogue, as all true 
 thinkers and scholars now see, obscured instead of reveal- 
 
288 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 ing the real nature of the Bible. The higher criticism of 
 our day, however, employs a method which is acknow- 
 ledged in every other department of experience to put 
 an end to mere fancies and prejudices, to narrowness 
 and to whims, and to expose the truth as it is in itself, 
 or rather as it must be discerned by the common reason 
 of man. It is fair to say that the higher criticism is now, 
 after two thousand years, for the first time revealing to 
 man the purport and the secret of the energising power 
 of the Old and New Testaments. Nor ought this to 
 seem a strange and remarkable thing ; for the same 
 method has already revealed to us the qualities, chemical 
 and physical, of matter, the motions of stars and planets, 
 the processes of plant and animal growth, and the steps 
 of the evolution by which the crust of the earth has been 
 formed ; and it is reconstructing for us whole epochs of 
 history and types of ancient civilisation, and bringing to 
 view the laws both of society and of the individual mind. 
 Now, it was one thing that the Bible should be read and 
 misunderstood ; it is another thing that it should be read 
 to a public trained to discriminate between its enduring 
 elements and the survivals in it of human error. It 
 cannot be said that to hear frequently the ancient records 
 even of the superstitions and sins of bygone ages is 
 without its disciplinary value as a warning ; for it will be 
 as difficult to keep as it was to attain the heights of humane 
 science. Nor does the well-disciplined mind require 
 of literature that nothing shall be embodied in it but what 
 we in our day, true to our conceptions, would express ; 
 one test of mental training being that each utterance is 
 judged relatively to the civilisation and epoch which 
 produced it, and is placed on a par with the corresponding 
 products and functions of other ages. It ought, then, 
 to be borne in mind that to bring the higher criticism 
 
LITERATURE AND THE LECTIONARY 289 
 
 to the people is at last and for the first time to bring 
 the Bible to them. 
 
 I have spoken thus far as if English literature did not 
 include the English translation of the Bible which con- 
 stitutes the Lectionary ; but of course, to speak strictly, 
 that translation is a large and has been a formative factor 
 in English literature itself. And it scarcely can be said 
 now, after three centuries, that the English Bible belongs 
 to foreign literature. Indeed, instead of wishing to place 
 it outside of the sphere of English literature, I would 
 plead rather that the revisers of the Lectionary should 
 educate public opinion to such a degree of catholicity as 
 to make it possible for them, when proposing innovations, 
 to incorporate in the Lectionary equally well translated 
 selections from Plato, Thucydides and Plutarch, from 
 Goethe and Dante. 
 
 But this subject belongs not so much to the question of 
 a Lectionary as to that of the compilation of a universal 
 Holy Scripture. Towards such a work, the leading 
 religious and educational authorities of all the nations of 
 the world must co-operate. There can be little doubt, 
 however, that they will select such works as the Apology^ 
 Crito and Ph<edo y together with parts of the Republic ; the 
 Pericles' Funeral Oration and the Delay of the Deity 
 in Punishing the Wicked^ as well as the parts of the 
 Bible which experience has proved to be most edifying. 
 Oriental scholars will choose whatever portions of the 
 Eastern scriptures are in their judgment worthy of in- 
 corporation. When such a universal Holy Scripture has 
 been compiled, the work of constructing a Lectionary of 
 superb beauty and irresistible cogency will present no 
 insuperable difficulties. 
 
 Returning to English literature proper, let me add 
 only two comments. After having for twenty years 
 
 19 
 
2 9 o NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 studied it with special reference to the suitability of 
 passages for a national Lectionary, I feel that the resources 
 of our prose and verse, instead of being exhausted by the 
 successive selections one may make, disclose ever new veins 
 of wealth ; for the insight of the reader only gradually 
 becomes trained to discriminate the parts most fraught 
 with edifying power in the way in which the tradition of 
 centuries has made it easy for us to judge of the Bible. 
 
 But, notwithstanding the opening up of the sacred 
 treasure of English literature, the feeling has grown upon 
 me that England, has as yet brought forth, out of her 
 sufferings and hopes, only her Old Testament, so to 
 speak. The Gospels' consciousness of fresh spiritual 
 power, of moral energy, of being in the centre of great 
 happenings which are worthy to be proclaimed with joy, 
 is scarcely to be found as yet in native expressions of 
 English experience. This is only to be accounted for by 
 the fact that thus far the great masses of the people of 
 England are still disinherited shut out from participa- 
 tion in the liberty, the wealth, the leisure, the control and 
 the security of the ruling classes. Let women and the 
 working people be admitted to the national inheritance, let 
 children be secure of food and sunshine and the aged of 
 home comfort, and English literature will begin to thrill 
 with the fresh joy of spiritual life, and, by expressing it, 
 augment it and quicken its development. Perhaps it might 
 be well, therefore, as the New Testament of England is not 
 yet written, not to think at present of completing, with any 
 sort of fixity, an elaborated Lectionary, or any other part 
 of Divine Service, but to count all work of revision for 
 several generations as at best tentative ; that the genius 
 of the new democracy may remember that the nation 
 waits for it to say that which most deserves utterance, 
 and which must be lived before it can be spoken. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 BAPTISM : SIGN OF INITIATION I RECOGNITION OF 
 CHILDREN 
 
 THE ulterior end of every religious rite is plainly disclosed 
 in the opening rubric of the service for the public baptism 
 of infants. There it is declared to be most fitting that 
 baptism should not be administered except upon Sundays 
 and other holy days, because the greatest number of persons 
 are then present and can testify that the child was baptised ; 
 in the second place, they will be put in remembrance of their 
 own profession made to God in their baptism. This 
 rubric also declares that it is expedient that baptism be 
 ministered in the vulgar tongue. Such a declaration 
 plainly discloses that the persons formulating the rubric 
 were aware that a Church rite is a means towards a social 
 end, and that the end is the commitment of individuals to 
 the Church, or to some other human relationship or office 
 approved by it. Were it not for this end, the rite might 
 as well be performed in Latin as in the vulgar tongue, 
 and when few were present as when many. 
 
 From the point of view of the purpose which ritual 
 serves, the democratic superiority of the Protestant 
 Churches to Roman Catholicism, through their having 
 adopted the current speech of each nation, is evident. 
 
 However much the Roman Catholic laity may be in- 
 
 291 
 
292 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 structed in the meaning of the Latin service, it is 
 psychologically impossible that their attention could be 
 fully concentrated upon the meaning of the ritual when 
 given in a dead language. The retention of the Latin 
 tongue furnishes proof of the spiritual 'monopoly and 
 supremacy of the Roman Catholic clergy. 
 
 Baptism is the established rite for the admission of new 
 members into the Church ; it outwardly symbolises 
 spiritual initiation into the organisation. This is clearly 
 stated in the service itself. Immediately after the 
 dipping or the pouring of water and the utterance of 
 the baptismal formula, the priest says : " We receive this 
 child into the congregation of Christ's flock^ and do sign him 
 with the sign of the Cross, in token that hereafter he shall 
 not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, 
 and manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the 
 world, and the devil ; and to continue Christ's faithful 
 soldier and servant unto his life's end. Amen." Then 
 the priest exhorts : " Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, 
 that this child is regenerate, and grafted into the body of 
 Christ's Church, let us give thanks unto Almighty God 
 for these benefits ; and with one accord make our prayers 
 unto him, that this child may lead the rest of his life 
 according to this beginning." 
 
 A rite, being only a sign, can have no meaning to one 
 who does not know the thing signified. And in pro- 
 portion as one keeps the signification precisely in mind, 
 one will be able not only to understand the rite, but to 
 criticise it and, if need be, to revise it. 
 
 There is so little understanding of the psychology and 
 the social economy of ritual in general, that baptism 
 naturally comes in for its full share of misconception 
 and depreciation. One who does not perceive the 
 necessity for any formalities at all cannot be expected to 
 
BAPTISM 293 
 
 value this special one. Yet to one who has followed 
 sympathetically my contention elsewhere, that in religion 
 the thing signified does not exist without the sign, it will 
 not be difficult to show that no person can be engrafted 
 spiritually into the body of Christ's Church unless he 
 submits to the sign which by general consent has been 
 adopted to signify admission. The sign and the thing 
 signified are, here as everywhere else, interdependent for 
 their existence. 
 
 No one can deny that the spiritual receiving of new 
 members into its fellowship is essential to the continued 
 life of the Church ; we are, then, forced to conclude that 
 a sign of admission is equally indispensable. If there 
 should cease to be a rite of initiation, there would cease 
 to be any new membership. In this respect, however, 
 the Church is not peculiar. To any society whatever, 
 new members are necessary to replace those who die or 
 resign, and their admission must be marked by some sort 
 of formality. Common sense, therefore, and the very 
 nature of the case, have brought it about that all societies, 
 whatever their object, do resort to some initiatory device. 
 They must exact at least an expression in writing or by 
 word of mouth that the person sympathises with the aims 
 of the organisation and desires to be a member. In 
 addition to these forms, they often require the payment 
 of a subscription more as a proof of the applicant's bona 
 fides than for financial aid. Such requirements are 
 formalities, but they cannot be called merely formal, as 
 some sign or other is indispensable. How else could a 
 society distinguish its members from the world at large ? 
 And if it could not distinguish its members, it all comes 
 to the same thing as if it had none. In short, only 
 through the sign does spiritual admission to an organisa- 
 tion become a positive fact of social experience and a 
 
294 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 factor capable of being traded upon by the society. In 
 many points of policy the Founder of the Christian Church 
 (or, if not he, the men who attributed the wisdom to him) 
 is shown to have been a consummate statesman ; and not 
 least in this, that he regarded neither the mere spirit nor 
 even the particular good works of the spirit in any man 
 as sufficient. Morality was not enough ; loyalty in the 
 soul was not enough ; secret service was not enough. 
 He insisted that, besides all such general evidences of 
 discipleship, everyone must submit to a special sign, 
 arbitrarily chosen and generally agreed upon, to signify 
 admission to membership of his society. 
 
 The baptismal service cites the saying of Jesus that 
 none can enter the Kingdom except he be born anew both 
 of water and of the Holy Ghost, water being the substance 
 of the arbitrary symbol chosen. Reduced to general terms, 
 this saying means that, besides a disposition within the 
 man's soul, a special outward sign must be made, else the 
 man cannot enter the kingdom of God. 
 
 Many persons accustomed to think for themselves in 
 matters of religion have mocked at the idea that baptism 
 should be counted essential to Christian salvation. They 
 think it preposterous that a man cannot inherit the bene- 
 fits of any organisation without going through a set form. 
 But such critics, although they may have thought freely, 
 have not thought fully ; and perhaps there is a certain 
 excuse for their confusion ; for without doubt, if salvation 
 is made to refer to a life after death, the idea that baptism 
 is essential to secure it is morally groundless. No mortal 
 can see any natural connection between baptism and the 
 saving of one's soul from eternal torment after death. 
 And if such an effect be called a spiritual mystery, still 
 one's reason and judgment are not satisfied ; conscience 
 refuses to be hoodwinked by any such interpretation ; it 
 
BAPTISM 295 
 
 declines to accept moral mysteries. But if we understand 
 salvation to mean something immediate and something 
 social in its causes and effects, Christ's making entrance to 
 the kingdom of God dependent upon baptism was perfectly 
 justifiable. He then meant that if a person would not 
 submit to the outward sign of admission he could not be 
 admitted to the new organisation ; if he was not admitted 
 outwardly he could not participate in the work ; and if he 
 did not participate in the work he could not partake of its 
 blessings. 
 
 In the case of all other societies no one doubts such a 
 causal connection. One who refuses to submit to the act 
 of initiation cannot partake of their life, know their secrets 
 or help to carry out their plans ; and, being excluded 
 from their counsels and meetings, one cannot get near 
 enough to the life of the movement to catch the fire of 
 its enthusiasm. The German Social Democrats, quite 
 rightly and with powerful effect, brand everyone who pro- 
 fesses Socialism but refuses openly to join the party as 
 worse than an enemy. A secret friend, they say, is a 
 moral abomination ; they insist that the sign and the 
 spirit are equally necessary. Such natural necessity justi- 
 fies the ordinance of baptism, and is fully recognised in the 
 rite itself ; it is given there as the cause for the establish- 
 ment of the rite, and therefore as the full explanation of 
 its potency. 
 
 Thus, there is nothing mysterious in the efficacy of 
 baptism. In every organisation its chosen sign of ad- 
 mission has exactly analogous effects. Moreover, it is 
 evident that the New Testament writers were fully aware 
 that there was no occult power in baptism and no hidden 
 and incomprehensible motive for the insistence upon it ; 
 for it is told that Nicodemus came secretly, and Jesus 
 refused to recognise him. It was to Nicodemus that Jesus 
 
296 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 declared that a man must be born of water as well as of the 
 spirit meaning that he must openly declare himself, as 
 well as be in sympathy and help secretly. 
 
 In order to impress the essential meaning and character 
 of this rite upon one's mind, it would be well to habituate 
 oneself not to call it baptism, after the arbitrary element of 
 the ceremonial act, but to name it initiation into the 
 Church, so as to suggest the function which the sign 
 performs. 
 
 My argument thus far proves only that some outward 
 sign of initiation into the Church is necessary ; it does 
 not prove that baptism is the only possible one. And 
 there can be no such proof. It would have been easy for 
 Christ to adopt some other symbol ; and this, having once 
 been established, would have produced all the essential 
 effects required. Yet there can be no doubt that one sign 
 may be much more appropriate than another. In choosing 
 what special one should be adopted, the wise statesman 
 would naturally consider the peculiar character of the 
 society in question. He would choose from among a 
 number the sign which would serve his purpose best. 
 Spiritual entrance into any movement must suggest by 
 poetic analogy some one action on the physical plane of 
 life which would symbolise it more fittingly than others. 
 Now, the mental side of becoming a member of a church 
 is this : a man has begun to feel deeply the distinction 
 between a life of mere self-interest, conventionality, 
 prudent conformity, worldly gain, appetite, impulsiveness, 
 and pleasure-seeking on the one hand, and on the other 
 a life boldly devoted to the common weal and to ideals of 
 art, science and all-round perfection ; and he now chooses 
 the latter as the worthier and indeed as the only real and 
 satisfying life. He accordingly, as a necessity for himself 
 and for the carrying out of his purpose, seeks the active 
 
BAPTISM 297 
 
 co-operation and fellowship of others in devotion to the 
 same ends. In entering into union with them a new life 
 begins for him. The conventional life, we note, is one 
 widely prevalent among men and deeply rooted in custom ; 
 while the inward life is comparatively rare. The old is 
 effortless and anarchic ; the new strenuous and moving to 
 a far-off goal. The old engenders social disease, poverty, 
 despair, madness, hatred, war and hypocrisies ; the new 
 tends to create a world of health, abundance, insight, love 
 and gladness. The habits and compensations of the old 
 are now to be abandoned as if they had been a pollution. 
 The change from self-seeking to fellowship in social 
 service is analogous in many particulars to purification of 
 the human body by washing. It is a transition from un- 
 cleanness to cleanness. John the Baptist caught up this 
 poetic analogy between physical ablution and mental puri- 
 fication, which had already been incorporated into the Judaic 
 ritual, and transferred it from the sphere of non-ethical to 
 that of moral cleanness. Then Jesus, or some statesman 
 of the first century, rendered the rite still more ethical and 
 far more poetic by adopting it as the sign of admission to 
 the Church, as if entrance into its fellowship was to do 
 for the minds of its members what a going down into the 
 running water of a river would do for their bodies. 
 
 The question now before us is whether the symbol thus 
 chosen was the best that could be found. If we set aside 
 all prejudice and bias, we shall be struck by its appropriate- 
 ness ; it is probable that the metaphor of washing away 
 sins will live as long as there is cause for using the words 
 " clean " and " unclean " to apply to moral states. And 
 so long as this metaphor suggests itself to the mind, so 
 long will baptism serve to symbolise initiation into the 
 Church. 
 
 If we consider this symbol in the light of the principles 
 
298 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 of democracy and naturalism which I have been advocat- 
 ing, we shall see that its appropriateness is in no wise 
 diminished by the transformation that is gradually taking 
 place within the Church. The reasons which, two thousand 
 years ago, led the organisers of the Church to adopt this 
 special symbol had nothing to do with the question whether 
 religious trust was to be placed only in personal agents 
 who were living members of society or also in personal 
 agencies beyond man and nature. Indeed, the appropri- 
 ateness of baptism, instead of being lessened, is enhanced, 
 now that we see the only sources of moral cleansing to 
 be within human society itself ; purification, if it is to 
 take place at all, must issue from a new social environ- 
 ment. Pollution is due only to the society into which 
 one is born and from the midst of which one was con- 
 ceived. When the Church no longer presumes to be 
 anything but an organised fellowship for the realisation 
 by natural means of human ideals on earth, there will no 
 longer be any liability that the rite of baptism will be 
 interpreted as possessing magical or occult potency. 
 What happens to the soul of the novice will be clearly 
 seen to be no transcendent mystery ; yet the sign will be 
 more potent than ever ; without submitting to it no one 
 will expect to be quickened into new life. But its 
 efficacy will be seen to be the most natural thing in the 
 world, and the notion of attributing it to superhuman 
 agencies will be regarded as a superstition. The 
 novice, when he enters the Church, simply enters a new 
 moral environment. In contrast with the society of the 
 world at large, Church fellowship is to his spiritual nature 
 what to a man's body is the water of a river which he goes 
 down into, as contrasted with the air that had hitherto 
 surrounded him. Such being the analogy, the Church, 
 even if it had never before adopted baptism as the symbol 
 
BAPTISM 299 
 
 of admission, would be led to do so now on grounds of 
 policy. 
 
 Thus far I have spoken as if by baptism immersion 
 were always meant ; for by universal consent that is the 
 ideal form ; both aesthetically and politically, sprinkling 
 is a degenerate ceremony. The whole philosophy of 
 ritual requires that, if purification by washing is to suggest 
 the form, the rite must consist of an actual washing ; 
 the body of the novice must be made positively cleaner 
 for submission to it. How else could the sign symbolise 
 the removal of impurities from the moral nature ? There- 
 fore there should be immersion, or no baptism at all. A 
 wholly different sign would be better than a meagre relic 
 that retains no vestige of the essential act, but only the 
 accidents. Such a remnant of a relic in ritual is 
 grotesque. If entrance into the Church achieves no 
 greater purification of the soul than the increase of clean- 
 liness effected upon the body by sprinkling, sprinkling 
 of course is an appropriate form ; but such a ground for 
 defending it can be offered only by one who means to 
 mock at the Church's ceremonies. Immersion, on the 
 contrary, is an actual bath ; and a bath is what the realism 
 of ritual demands. 
 
 When we consider the present main tendencies of 
 religion towards belief in ritual, on the one hand, and, on 
 the other, towards the principle of the spiritual autonomy 
 of society we are led to anticipate that there will be a 
 gradual return to complete dipping in the water, and that 
 the rite will never again dwindle to a mere hint of itself. 
 Indeed, it is probable that it never would have so 
 dwindled in the past had not the notion that the water 
 possessed magical effects for the soul caused the devout 
 to mix metaphors. They began to believe that the water 
 itself by divine influence became medicinal ; and under 
 
300 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 the idea not of washing but of medicine the rite was trans- 
 formed. A few drops of magical water prescribed by an 
 infinite physician would be enough to cure any patient ! 
 But the Church as she becomes more clearly naturalistic 
 will drop this confusion of imagery, and retain exclusively 
 the metaphor of washing. 
 
 We have seen that immersion in water happily 
 symbolises the transition from self-seeking to a fellowship 
 of social service. But in order to make clear that the 
 essence of the virtue of baptism has nothing to do with 
 the substance of the element concerned, and that there is 
 no question as to whether water was sanctified in some 
 mysterious way, let me point out that, were there in 
 existence a society of propagandists of self-seeking who 
 wished to initiate the altruistic into an organisation for 
 selfishness, they also would find immersion an equally 
 perfect symbol of their meaning. There is no vital con- 
 nection between the purification of the body by means of 
 water and the new life of disinterested service of others. 
 The advocates of selfishness would naturally call selfish- 
 ness purity and unselfishness a pollution. They therefore 
 would not need to change the outward act of initiation ; 
 only the verbal formularies of the Christian Church would 
 require to be modified. In a similar manner, it would be 
 possible for a nation to adopt immersion as the sign for 
 the naturalisation of foreign-born persons ; but then, in 
 place of the Church formularies, the bodily act would 
 need to be accompanied by the oath of allegiance required 
 of applicants for naturalisation. In this case the new 
 meaning would not be a direct inversion of the old, but 
 the ritual would have been shifted from the sphere of 
 religious to that of political affiliation. 
 
 Such total changes of signification being possible 
 through the mere introduction of new words into a rite, 
 
BAPTISM 
 
 301 
 
 it is a fortiori to be concluded that the Church might 
 adopt the minor change of ceasing to regard religious 
 conversion as wrought by a superhuman agency and yet 
 retain immersion as indicating the transition from self- 
 seeking to the fellowship of social service. Yet in this 
 case also, while every item in the rite except the words 
 might be kept unmodified, the new meaning would 
 require revision of the verbal formularies. We shall 
 have no doubt on this score if we examine carefully the 
 text of the baptismal rite. Little offence will be found in 
 the opening exhortation by the priest, which reads : 
 
 Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all men are conceived and 
 born in sin ; and that our Saviour Christ saith, None can 
 enter into the kingdom of God, except he be regenerate 
 and born anew of Water and of the Holy Ghost ; I beseech 
 you to call upon God the Father, through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, that of his bounteous mercy he will grant to this 
 Child that thing which by nature he cannot have ; that he 
 may be baptised with Water and the Holy Ghost, and 
 received into Christ's holy Church, and be made a lively 
 member of the same. 
 
 Bearing in mind the naturalistic signification of the 
 word " sin," we cannot deny that all men are conceived 
 and born in it. Admitting, further (what we have just 
 seen), that a sign of initiation into the Church is necessary, 
 we cannot deny the statement that a man cannot enter 
 into the kingdom of God except he be born of water as 
 well as of the Holy Ghost, water once having been chosen 
 as the symbol. Further, it is true that righteousness of 
 life is a thing that comes by conscious self-determination ; 
 it is a matter of principle and of rational decision rather 
 than of spontaneous and unreflective impulse. If we bear 
 in mind the distinction often made between nature and art, 
 we shall admit that righteousness is a matter not of nature 
 
302 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 but of art ; it is designed by the purpose of man ; it is, 
 so to speak, artificial as contrasted with natural ; it is a 
 result of effort and is born of ideational energies rather 
 than of any mechanical tendency which of itself would 
 have brought it into existence. It is clear, then, that 
 what the Church morally seeks for every child is a thing 
 which by nature he does not originally have ; he has it 
 by the intelligent will of his fellow-men and himself. 
 And this is clearly the element of truth and fact under- 
 lying the words in the latter half of the opening exhorta- 
 tion. So that on the whole, although the phraseology is 
 antiquated, the substance of the thought here is sound. 
 
 When we come, however, to the first prayer of the 
 Baptismal Service, we find ourselves face to face with an 
 astonishing literary production. It reads as follows : 
 
 Almighty and Everlasting God, who of thy great mercy 
 didst save Noah and his family in the ark from perishing 
 by water ; and also didst safely lead the children of Israel 
 thy people through the Red Sea, figuring thereby thy holy 
 Baptism ; and by the Baptism of thy well-beloved Son 
 Jesus Christ, in the river Jordan, didst sanctify Water to 
 the mystical washing away of sin ; We beseech thee, for 
 thine infinite mercies, that thou wilt mercifully look upon 
 this Child j wash him and sanctify him with the Holy 
 Ghost ; that he^ being delivered from thy wrath, may be 
 received into the ark of Christ's Church : and being sted- 
 fast in faith, joyful through hope, and rooted in charity, 
 may so pass the waves of this troublesome world, that 
 finally he may come to the land of everlasting life, there to 
 reign with thee world without end ; through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord. Amen. 
 
 The only part of this whole prayer which can survive 
 the tests of literary, ethical and ecclesiastical insight is the 
 participial phrase " being stedfast in faith, joyful through 
 hope, and rooted in charity." These prepositions, 
 
BAPTISM 303 
 
 adjectives and nouns are the only words in the whole 
 gigantic sentence which fit with anything like closeness 
 the essential principle of the Church. The metaphor of 
 water which is forced through all the windings of the 
 tortuous sentence loses wholly the natural course of poetic 
 speech. 
 
 Let no one be disposed to condone the peculiarities of 
 this document on the ground that it is old and that it is 
 only quaint with years ; for after all it is not so old. 
 In this form it is the result of very hasty composition, 
 adaptation and re-adaptation in the time of the Protestant 
 Reformation. But even were it a thousand years of age, 
 its peculiarity could not be traced to its antiquity, for its 
 literary absurdities are of a kind that have no reference to 
 age and are not due to changes of literary taste. Logic 
 was always logic, and from the time of the ancient 
 prophets and of Homer poetic speech has been subject 
 to the canons of universal thinking. Nowhere in the 
 acknowledged great literature of three thousand years is 
 there to be found any such preposterous metaphor. The 
 analogy between baptism and what happened to Noah and 
 to the children of Israel is unthinkable as any schoolboy 
 would detect if he were not forbidden to examine and 
 criticise ecclesiastical compositions. 
 
 Even if we assume that the Flood and the passage 
 through the Red Sea were actual occurrences, the inapt- 
 ness of the reference is not diminished. Noah and his 
 family and the children of Israel were saved from water, 
 not by water. What the water did was not to save but 
 to destroy. How then can these assumed events pre- 
 figure baptism ? If it be said that the water destroyed 
 the wicked and that in baptism it saves the good, and 
 that therefore in both cases water is the substance unto 
 salvation, the metaphor becomes the more impossible, for 
 
3 o 4 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 then the good person baptised is made analogous to the 
 wicked person destroyed. And indeed throughout the 
 latter clauses of the prayer there is a distinct carrying out 
 of the analogy as between the baptised person and the 
 wicked ; for the petition is uttered that he may reach 
 the ark, may pass the waves of this troublesome world, 
 and may come to land. The notion at the root of this 
 confusion of thought is probably that the substance of the 
 water itself is spiritually remedial. Yet, even starting 
 from this point of view, it ought to have been seen that in 
 the case of Noah the remedial substance was wood. It 
 was the ark that saved Noah as the water saves the novice 
 of the Church. And what saved the children of Israel 
 was the dry land, which in that case therefore was the 
 sanctified substance. Yet what logic is there underneath 
 the analogy, if we say : Noah was saved by wood, the 
 children of Israel by dry land, the Christians by water ; 
 therefore, the sanctifying power of water is prefigured in 
 the experiences of Noah and of the chosen people ? 
 
 If it be said that to criticise thus the merely literary 
 infelicities of this prayer is altogether to lower my argu- 
 ment, I answer that these infelicities are not merely 
 literary and are not accidental. The cause of them is that 
 same trust in supernatural agencies which is the source of 
 all the other evils into which religion has fallen. Had not 
 the narratives of the Bible been believed to emanate from 
 an intelligence superhuman and supernatural, men other- 
 wise of at least average abilities would have used their 
 wits aright. They would not have been tempted to seek 
 prefigurements of baptism, but would have justified it by 
 the perfectly patent reasons for it in Church polity. Had 
 they sought historical precedents, they would not have 
 mistaken for such what were evidently nothing of the sort. 
 But it was impiety to pry too closely into the limitations 
 
BAPTISM 
 
 305 
 
 of Bible meanings, and it had become a habit to seek and 
 crave for the mysterious and the inexplicable. The 
 mentally paralysing effect of trust in supernatural agents 
 is illustrated in its causing Church authorities to mix 
 metaphors in order to make it seem that the Creator of 
 the world ages before had foreshadowed a ceremonial of 
 the Church. 
 
 But even were there no literary defects in this opening 
 prayer, the references to Noah and to the Red Sea 
 incident would need to be omitted ; and all lovers of the 
 Church will work to that end. Are there any narratives 
 in the whole of ancient literature more discredited than 
 these stories of the Flood and the passing through the 
 Red Sea ? Instead, therefore, of being a support and of 
 adding dignity and solemnity to the baptismal rite, these 
 references make the ceremony seem foolish in the eyes 
 of all except the illiterate and the fanatical. If reasons are 
 to be given to explain or enhance the dignity of the rite 
 of baptism, they must be the real reasons ; and if historical 
 precedents are to be offered in order to add the authority 
 of custom, they could have been found in the general 
 practice of baptism among the Jews, in its adaptation by 
 John the Baptist, and again by the Church statesmen of 
 the first century. 
 
 The rite of initiation as practised by the Church awakens 
 controversy not only in regard to the relative fitness of 
 sprinkling and immersion, but also in regard to the 
 comparative merits of infant and adult admission. It 
 becomes quite clear upon reflection that infant baptism is 
 not consonant with the individuality and liberty which 
 must be recognised in a social-democratic religion. What 
 we see in the difference of custom as regards infants 
 between the Baptist denomination and the Church of 
 England is an illustration of the difference, which I have 
 
 20 
 
3 o6 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 pointed out in another volume, between the Church and 
 the sects as regards socialism. The sects are democratic 
 but individualistic ; the Church is socialistic but despotic. 
 So that from a social-democratic point of view we find 
 ourselves able to side neither with infant baptism as 
 practised by the Church nor with adult baptism as practised 
 by the Baptists. The Baptists have no form of welcom- 
 ing children and dedicating them to the new life ; the 
 Church constrains the adult to fulfil promises which had 
 been made on his behalf before he could intelligently 
 judge for himself. The Church is socialistic to an extreme 
 which obliterates the individuality and personal responsi- 
 bility of each human being ; the Baptist denomination 
 fails to regulate into a systematic discipline from the 
 child's earliest years those influences which need to 
 be organised to its advantage. Further, if we look 
 closely into the situation, we shall be compelled to say 
 that, if baptism is to be the sign of engraftment into 
 Christ's Church, it never should be practised upon a 
 person of immature judgment. 
 
 The truth is that, if one carefully studies the baptismal 
 formulae, the Catechism and the rite of Confirmation, one 
 receives a distinct impression that confirmation, recognising 
 the culmination in the novice's own judgment of what the 
 god-parents committed the child to, is itself the essential 
 part of the baptismal rite. Initiation into the Church is 
 not completed until the member has been confirmed. And 
 if the practice is to become unequivocal, the Church must 
 postpone the actual ceremony of sprinkling or immer- 
 sion until confirmation. In the practice of the Church 
 before the Reformation, the individuality of the child 
 was absolutely overlooked ; the Church was a spiritual 
 despotism of the extremest order. For until the changes 
 made by the Protestants in the Anglican rite of baptism, 
 
BAPTISM 307 
 
 it was exclusively the Bishop and not the candidate who 
 confirmed. Since then, a glaring self-contradiction has 
 confused the significance of the Anglican Order of Con- 
 firmation. The last sentence in the last rubric at the end 
 of the Catechism reads, " And, if the Bishop approve of 
 them, he shall confirm them in manner following." Yet the 
 Preface to be read by the Bishop or minister appointed 
 by him at the opening of the Confirmation Service is as 
 follows : 
 
 To the end that Confirmation may be ministered to the 
 more edifying of such as shall receive it, the Church hath 
 thought good to order, That none hereafter shall be Con- 
 firmed, but such as can say the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, 
 and the Ten Commandments ; and can also answer to 
 such other Questions, as in the short Catechism are con- 
 tained : which order is very convenient to be observed ; to 
 the end, that children, being now come to the years of 
 discretion, and having learned what their Godfathers and 
 Godmothers promised for them in Baptism, they may 
 themselves^ with their own mouth and consent, openly 
 before the Church, ratify and confirm the same ; and also 
 promise, that by the grace of God they will evermore 
 endeavour themselves faithfully to observe such things, as 
 they, by their own confession^ have assented unto. 
 
 A rubric immediately follows, instructing the Bishop 
 to say : 
 
 Do ye here, in the presence of God, and of this con- 
 gregation, renew the solemn promise and vow that was 
 made in your name at your Baptism ; ratifying and con- 
 firming the same in your own persons^ and acknowledging 
 yourselves bound to believe, and to do, all those things, 
 which your Godfathers and Godmothers then undertook 
 for you ? 
 
 This self-contradiction is probably not so much due to 
 inadvertence as to conscious compromise. At the time 
 
308 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 of the Reformation in England there was such an 
 awakening of spiritual liberty that the leaders of the 
 Church were stirred by conscience or moved by reasons 
 of policy to interpret Confirmation as a ratification by the 
 candidate himself. Yet such had never in a thousand 
 years been the tradition or custom of the Christian 
 Church, and so they were constrained to introduce words 
 which would give a wholly new interpretation. Either 
 the Bishop confirms or the candidate confirms. It must 
 be one or the other ; it cannot be both. Now, since 
 the Prayer Book was last revised, the spirit of liberty has 
 penetrated almost all the institutions, customs and senti- 
 ments of English life ; and were the Prayer Book once 
 more to be subjected to revision, without doubt the view 
 that the candidate himself is the one who ratifies the 
 vows made at his baptism would compel a removal of any 
 words to the effect that the Bishop, by the laying on of 
 hands, confirms. But probably no such change would 
 satisfy the fully awakened spirit of social democracy to-day. 
 It is reasonable to anticipate that infant baptism will be 
 abolished. It is not an accident that the most democratic 
 churches in England and America are those which name 
 themselves after the rite of baptism and which initiate 
 only adults. The Baptists may honestly think that their 
 emphasis of the rite of initiation and their insistence 
 that it shall be undergone only by adults are due wholly 
 to their extreme deference to the authority of the New 
 Testament. They may say that they have no thought 
 of democracy or of ethical fitness or of ecclesiastical polity 
 in their protest against infant baptism ; they may con- 
 scientiously maintain that their one motive is to obey and 
 follow Christ even in the pettiest details. But every 
 psychological student of Church life sees plainly that a 
 true instinct of statesmanship lies at the root of their 
 
BAPTISM 
 
 309 
 
 emphasis of baptism and their exclusion of infants from 
 initiation. 
 
 The Baptists in the seventeenth century were competing 
 spiritually, so to speak, against great odds. They were a 
 sect having no famous genius as their organiser and 
 founder, and they had not the advantage of social prestige. 
 In the absence of these worldly advantages, they saw that 
 an immense gain would accrue from making boldly con- 
 spicuous the ceremony of initiation, and that to this end 
 they must select the most dramatic form possible immer- 
 sion and not dipping. Likewise they refused to allow 
 anyone to undergo the ceremony until of an age when 
 appeal could be made to his moral individuality ; and thus 
 they gained his voluntary co-operation, which was a surer 
 asset than any sense of having been already committed in 
 infancy. The initiation of infants into the Church over- 
 looks self-respect, the great dynamic of democracy. 
 Self-respect was the force, when the Baptist denomina- 
 tion was forming, that had begun to defy kings and 
 priests and now was organising religious bodies. No 
 matter what account these organisations may give of 
 themselves, they are inspired far more by instinctive 
 reverence for the child, for the future man and the 
 cause of religious liberty, than for the letter of the 
 New Testament. 
 
 But they advanced in reaction against the despotic 
 socialism of pre-Reformation custom too far in the direc- 
 tion of individualistic liberty. They possess no rite or 
 sacrament which recognises the indebtedness of the infant 
 to the spiritual organism of society, the spiritual re- 
 sponsibility of society for the child, and the claim of 
 society to control the child's environment. Nor does 
 the device of the Established Church, whereby the full 
 admission of infants is made ultimately conditional upon 
 
310 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 their own ratification of the baptismal vows, meet the 
 needs of the case. If the pre-Reformation custom of 
 infant baptism with episcopal ratification erred in the 
 direction of a crushing socialism, the Protestant tendency 
 to postpone baptism entirely or essentially, without 
 supplementing it by a new sacrament exclusively for 
 infants, errs equally in the opposite direction. There 
 ought to be a rite, not implying responsibility on the part 
 of the child or pledging him, but nevertheless recognising 
 him as an offspring of the spiritual organism of the com- 
 munity, and committing the community to its distinctive 
 obligations towards each new moral agency. 
 
 We need a ritual, sacramental in nature, of the re- 
 ceiving of very young children by the national Church 
 and of their dedication by parents to the higher service 
 of the nation. Such a sacrament would bear little 
 outward or even essential resemblance to the present 
 baptismal rite of the Prayer Book. Its construction, 
 therefore, could not proceed by way of re-interpreting 
 or revising the present form ; in order to supply the 
 deficiency in our existing manual of religious services, it 
 would be necessary to construct a new rite. I may be 
 permitted, therefore, without recommending its adoption, 
 to describe one tentatively used in ethical societies, as 
 thus I can most easily convey to the reader what I 
 conceive must be the essential nature of a sacrament of 
 the recognition of children. 
 
 This tentative ceremony used in a number of ethical 
 societies is opened with these words by the officiating 
 representative of the religious community : 
 
 In old days there were angels who came and took men 
 by the hand, and led them away from the City of Destruc- 
 tion. We see no white- winged angels now. But yet 
 men are led away from threatening destruction : a hand is 
 
BAPTISM 311 
 
 put into theirs which leads them forth gently towards a 
 calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward ; 
 and the hand may be a little child's. 
 
 Or, as an alternative : 
 
 At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, 
 Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven ? And 
 Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the 
 midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye 
 be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not 
 enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore 
 shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest 
 in the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 Or this : 
 
 And they brought young children to him, that he should 
 touch them : and his disciples rebuked those that brought 
 them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, 
 and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto 
 me, and forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom of 
 God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive 
 the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter 
 therein. 
 
 And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon 
 them, and blessed them. 
 
 Then are chanted the following lines from Emerson : 
 
 Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond ; 
 Bound for the just, but not beyond j 
 Not glad, as the low loving herd, 
 Of self in other still preferred ; 
 But they have heartily designed 
 The benefit of all mankind. 
 
 And they serve mankind austerely, 
 After their own genius, clearly, 
 Without false humility ; 
 For this is Love's nobility ; 
 Not to scatter bread and gold, 
 Goods and raiment bought and sold ; 
 
3 i2 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 But to hold fast his simple sense, 
 And speak the speech of innocence, 
 And with hand and body and blood 
 To make his bosom counsel good. 
 For he that feeds men serveth few, 
 While he serves all who dares be true. 
 
 Then is read as a lesson any appropriate passage from 
 the Bible or other literature. Two have been favourites 
 in ethical societies on such occasions. One of these is 
 Wordsworth's " Ode on Intimations of Immortality," 
 the chief theme of which is neither immortality nor the 
 doctrine of pre-natal reminiscence, but in the very spirit 
 of Christ's own words the glorious innocence and docility 
 of children, their admiring wonder and curiosity, their 
 audacious faith, displayed in their readiness for new ad- 
 venture, as compared with the over-cautious prudence, 
 indifference and apathy, excessive self-interest and con- 
 ventionality, prevalent among adults. The other is a 
 condensation of the passage in George Eliot's Silas 
 Marner which culminates in the sentences given above as 
 opening words of the ceremony where she tenderly and 
 graphically presents the humanising effect upon a miser 
 of the transfer of his affections from his gold to a little 
 child. After the reading and the singing of a hymn, 
 the minister pronounces this exordium, taken almost 
 without alteration from a passage in Sir John Seeley's 
 Ecce Homo : 
 
 How were those men and women brought up who have 
 become for the most part pure, generous and humane ? 
 With rare exceptions, they were reared by parents who 
 had these qualities, they lived in a society which had a 
 high tone, they were accustomed daily and hourly to see 
 just acts done, to hear gentle words spoken ; and the just- 
 ness and the gentleness passed into their hearts, and slowly 
 moulded their habits, making their moral discernment clear. 
 
BAPTISM 313 
 
 Such men and women, looking back to their childhood, 
 remember commands and prohibitions which it is a pleasure 
 to obey for the sake of those who gave them. Often they 
 think of those who are absent or dead, and say, " How 
 would this action appear to father, if he knew ? " or 
 " Would mother have approved or disapproved that word ? " 
 To such, no baseness appears a small baseness because its 
 consequences may be small ; nor does the yoke of law 
 seem burdensome, although it is ever on their necks ; nor 
 do they dream of covering a sin by an atoning act of virtue. 
 Often in solitude they blush when some impure fancy sails 
 across the clear heaven of their minds : because they are 
 never alone, because the absent Examples, the Authorities 
 they still revere, rule not their actions only but their inmost 
 hearts ; because their conscience is indeed awake and alive, 
 representing all the nobleness with which they stand in 
 sympathy, and reporting their most hidden indecorum 
 before a public opinion of the absent and the dead. 
 
 Then, as an introduction to the ceremony of the parents* 
 pledge, the minister says : 
 
 It is a time-honoured custom among religious fellowships 
 to welcome into their midst the young children of members. 
 The mother and father, grateful for the innocent fresh life 
 which has blest their love, and feeling their obligation to 
 bring up their children in the path of rectitude, are well 
 pleased and anxious to make an acknowledgment of their 
 joy and duty, in the presence of those with whom they 
 are bound in spiritual communion. Just as they sought 
 upon the occasion of marriage the sanction and blessing of 
 the State and of Humanity ; so after the birth of a child 
 they again, as it were, summon the community to recognise 
 and approve the precious little life which they have brought 
 into the world. They are aware also that the upbringing 
 of the child does not rest in their hands alone. For good 
 or ill, the neighbourhood, the city, the nation, the whole 
 world will exercise influence. The parents therefore turn 
 to the community, to secure its help and goodwill. 
 
 They invite it, through the religious company of friends 
 and sympathisers, to acknowledge and assume joint re- 
 
3 14 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 sponsibility with themselves. It is in this spirit that we are 
 now to perform the ceremony of dedicating to the good 
 life, and welcoming (here state the full name of the child), who 
 has been brought here by his (or her) parents this morning. 
 As representing this assembly and speaking in the name of 
 Humanity, I invite (here give the names of the father and 
 mother) with their little child (here again naming the child by 
 its Christian name) to stand before me. 
 
 Will you, the father and mother of this little boy (or girl), 
 not only care for his (or her) bodily health and outward 
 prosperity in life, but do your utmost to see that he (or she) 
 grows up to be high-minded and brave, shielding him (or 
 her) from the stain of evil, instilling into his (or her) spirit 
 principles of love and duty, and training him (or her) not 
 only to self-respect and self-control, but to social service 
 and consideration for others ? Will you teach him (or 
 her) to think for himself (or herself), and help him (or her) to 
 choose as the chief end of his (or her) life the making of 
 the world purer, braver and happier for his (or her) having 
 lived in it ? (The parents reply : We will.) 
 
 Thus have these parents publicly dedicated their child to 
 Righteousness of Life and the Peace of Righteousness. 
 
 Then the minister adds : 
 
 And now, in recognition of the human claim which 
 this child has upon all of us, and upon all men, I request 
 the members of this church and other kindly disposed 
 persons present in this congregation to rise and stand (the 
 congregation rises) while I place this wreath of flowers, as a 
 symbol of human love, which is the crown of human life, 
 upon the head of this child. (Here the wreath Is placed upon 
 the chiles head.) 
 
 Likewise I give to the parents for their child two of 
 the best books ever written, to be kept for him (or her) 
 until he (or she) be grown up. The books are works of 
 two great and good men. These men were of different 
 religions : one was a Pagan and one a Christian ; but 
 both were lovers of righteousness and of all mankind 
 Marcus Aurelius, the good Emperor of Rome, and Thomas 
 a Kempis, the humble Brother of the Common Life. 
 These two have been chosen that together they may come 
 
BAPTISM 315 
 
 to stand in the memory of this child as a sign of the broad 
 spirit of ethical religion, which turns to every source of 
 good for strength and inspiration. In each of these 
 volumes I have inscribed the name of the child and the 
 date and occasion of this service. 
 
 With the placing of this wreath upon his (or her) head 
 we bestow our blessing upon this child j and with this 
 gift of books we acknowledge ourselves responsible together 
 with the parents to bring home to his (or her) heart the 
 truth that makes men free, the beauty that graces life, and 
 the love that hallows it. 
 
 Then is sung whatever hymn may be deemed fit, and a 
 discourse suitable to the occasion is delivered ; after which 
 another hymn is sung, and the ceremony is ended with 
 these words by the minister : 
 
 And righteousness shall be the girdle or his loins, and 
 faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall 
 dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with 
 the kid j and the calf and the young lion and the fading 
 together ; and a little child shall lead them. 
 
 In this ceremony two essential points are clearly 
 emphasised the parents' pledge of responsibility and 
 the community's ; but in three particulars the form is 
 deficient. 
 
 In the first place, the supreme recognition by a com- 
 munity of the individuality of each child born is that it 
 gives him, and he thereby owns, a separate name. The 
 rite of welcoming and dedicating a child might well start 
 with the formal conferring of its name. The social signi- 
 ficance of the naming of a child is recognised by the 
 Church of England, although it confuses the point by 
 introducing on the same occasion the admission of the 
 child into the Church as a member. Such initiation will 
 be deferred until the child's maturity, when the Church 
 
316 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 realises that it is not the new-born babe that comes to the 
 Church, but the Church that comes to the new-born babe. 
 A naming ceremony is a recognition by the Church- 
 nation of the child as a moral agent ; and when we fully 
 appreciate the philosophy of names, we shall see that 
 no more exquisite symbol than such a ceremony could 
 be found for the community's welcome of infants. 
 
 It is possible that someone may ask what affair it is of 
 the Church to name a child. But such a question could 
 only arise where there had been a separation not merely 
 of Church and State but of Church and nation, and a 
 forgetting of the social significance of religion. If we 
 adopt the philosophy of the Church advocated in this 
 book, we shall recognise that the Church in welcoming 
 the child is the nation acting in its capacity of teacher, 
 philosopher and friend. The civil State at present en- 
 forces the registration of every infant's name within a 
 few weeks after its birth ; but when religious nationalism 
 exercises its proper influence, this registration will be in 
 the hands of the Church officials, and will accompany 
 the ritual of welcome, as the registration of marriages 
 accompanies the wedding ceremony. 
 
 Another element lacking in the form I have presented, 
 but contained in the Church's rite, is the assuming of 
 responsibility for the child's moral welfare by three 
 persons acting as representatives of the Church that is, 
 of the nation as a spiritual organism. It is far from 
 adequate that the congregation should simply rise as a 
 sign of acknowledgment of the community's responsi- 
 bility, or that a wreath should be placed upon the head 
 of the child ; for the responsibility of the community 
 should be fixed and centralised in definite persons who 
 publicly assume its obligation. So significant and 
 essential in the child's life is- this assumption of responsi- 
 
BAPTISM 317 
 
 bility by others besides the parents, that one at first marvels 
 that in the actual practice of Church members it should 
 have lost its meaning. 
 
 The only way to account for the decay of so important 
 a pledge is by the general falling away of interest in 
 the teachings of the Church as they have hitherto been 
 interpreted, and the consequent sense of hollowness and 
 worthlessness imputed to its ritual. Suppose, for instance, 
 that the godparents were reminded by the priest to do 
 their utmost to see, not that the child should " renounce 
 the devil and all his works," but that it should be dis- 
 ciplined to truthfulness, honesty, self-respect, temperance 
 and the service of others. In modern speech, and from 
 the modern point of view of the moral life, the words 
 " renounce the devil and all his works " do not point 
 definitely enough to what, without doubt, was originally 
 meant ; for while the existence of the devil as a person 
 is almost universally discredited, the word has not as yet 
 come into general use as indicating the organic energy 
 of social evil. And if the child is only to renounce a 
 being whom nobody believes to exist, he is to renounce 
 very little. The godparents are further exhorted to see 
 that the child is taught to believe in God ; but here 
 again, such vagueness prevails as to what God is, that it 
 is not quite clear what the laymen who pledge themselves 
 are to do. They are further to see that the child is 
 taught how solemn is the promise which he has made 
 through them as his representatives. But this whole 
 notion that the godparents represent the child and speak 
 in his stead is misleading. They represent the nation- 
 Church, the State-Church, and not the child. When 
 they promise to teach the child, they are not making a 
 promise of something the child is to do ; they are 
 assuming the r61e of a guardian and teacher, and they do 
 
318 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 this on behalf of the community ; in everything they 
 say the community is speaking. 
 
 There is something unreal and painfully confused in 
 this part of the Church's service. It was constructed 
 hastily, and, despite the hundreds of years in which it 
 has been in use, it has never yet been carefully thought 
 out and analysed ; had it been, a humanistic revision of 
 it would have been made generations ago. The truth is, 
 there was in the sixteenth century no clear understanding 
 of what a child is, no recognition of the true individuality 
 of anyone least of all of children. There was not a full 
 recognition even of the national function of the Church 
 itself. And the makers of the ritual were also handicapped 
 by the pernicious notion that the whole rule of life is to 
 be found in the Bible and in the systematised wisdom of 
 past ages. There was also prevalent a mechanical use 
 of certain words as if they possessed a special sanctity ; 
 for example, the frequent repetition by the Prayer Book 
 of the expression, " renounce the devil and all his works." 
 Why did not its framers sometimes paraphrase such a 
 clause into purely ethical terms ? Had they done so, 
 they would have brought home to the laity the real 
 psychological processes and factors involved in renouncing 
 " the devil and all his works." 
 
 The only answer is that the fullness of time had not 
 come. The human mind had not arrived at the stage 
 when it could see through the words to the mental and 
 social realities behind. 
 
 Again, there survives, in the exhortation that the god- 
 parents shall call upon the child to hear sermons, the old- 
 fashioned limitation of religious education to the preaching 
 of set sermons. Suppose, instead, that the godparents were 
 urged by the Church to send the child to the best schools, 
 where he would learn the results of science, where he would 
 
BAPTISM 319 
 
 be trained to investigate the laws of the universe in which 
 he must live, and be encouraged to observe for himself 
 and draw his own conclusions from the data of first-hand 
 experience. Then there would be a ring of reality about 
 the minister's exhortation to the godparents, which would 
 immediately fill their now empty pledge with solemn 
 duties for themselves and real benefits for the child. 
 Suppose that, instead of telling them that the child should 
 be taught the Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten 
 Commandments, they were charged that he should be 
 brought to understand the chief responsibilities of 
 citizenship, the evolution of the nation's life out of 
 barbarism into civil society, the present laws and constitu- 
 tion of his country, and the reasons for them ; in this 
 way the nation could rescue not only the Church 
 organisation and professional religion, but itself, from 
 much that now threatens its future manliness. 
 
 The best part of the exhortation of the priest to the 
 godparents in the baptismal formula is at the end, where 
 the guardians of the child are reminded that "Baptism 
 doth represent unto us our profession ; which is, to follow 
 the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like 
 unto him ; that, as he died, and rose again for us, so 
 should we, who are baptised, die from sin, and rise again 
 unto righteousness ; continually mortifying all our evil 
 and corrupt affections, and daily proceeding in all virtue 
 and godliness of living." Here is a most beautiful 
 recognition of the ethical interpretation of resurrection. 
 The supposed death and rising of the body of Christ 
 are taken merely as a physical symbol for ceasing to do 
 wrong and beginning to live the good life. Even one 
 who wholly disbelieves in the physical resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ can scarcely take offence at the allusion here, 
 and the adoption of the legend, if such it be, to symbolise 
 
320 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 the most real of all moral experiences the dying to 
 what is mean, selfish and insincere, and the rising again 
 to a disinterested love of truth and one's fellow-men. 
 
 What we clearly need is a thorough reconstruction of 
 the Church's ritual of the recognition of the child. We 
 need a complete elaboration in form of the idea of the 
 community's joint responsibility with the parents to give 
 him every opportunity that he may become fully equipped 
 for human service. Here is an opportunity for the 
 Church to render an inestimable benefit to the nation ; 
 and nothing could be more in accord with the spirit of 
 our times. While the nineteenth century was spoken of 
 as the woman's century, the twentieth has already been 
 called the child's ; the revelation to our present genera- 
 tion is the child, whom adults had never adequately 
 known or appreciated. 
 
 The third deficiency in the child's welcoming service 
 which I have given above is that it contains no adequate 
 symbol of the tenderness of the community's regard for 
 the new life which it recognises. And in the Church's 
 formula, it seems only an incident to the ceremony of 
 dipping, that the infant is received by the minister into 
 his arms ; yet this would constitute an exquisite symbol 
 to indicate the community's enfolding protection of the 
 child from adversity and malign influence. The repre- 
 sentative of the spiritual offices of the community should 
 take the infant into his arms to indicate that the nation 
 shares with the mother and father their individualised 
 affection and solicitude for their child. 
 
 We have, then, suggested four symbolical acts which 
 would beautifully and impressively, because naturally 
 and simply, bring home to every witness the nation's 
 recognition of the child. The ceremonies of the parents' 
 vow, the naming, the godparents' pledge, and the taking 
 
BAPTISM 321 
 
 of the child by the priest into his arms, would constitute 
 an adequate ritual. And it will be noticed that the last 
 three acts are contained in the Church's ministration of 
 baptism, though, by being rendered merely incidental to 
 the rite of initiation into Church membership, they are 
 robbed of their proper spiritual significance. 
 
 21 
 
CHAPTER Xll 
 
 BAPTISM : THE CATECHISM I THE ADMISSION OF MEMBERS 
 
 THE main contents of the Catechism consist of the 
 Apostles* Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord's 
 Prayer. I have already devoted one chapter to the 
 Creeds and two each to the Commandments and the 
 Lord's Prayer. I therefore need not consider them again 
 in their setting in the Catechism except perhaps to insist 
 upon the necessity of preventing the bad effects of the 
 child's thinking that he fully or even approximately 
 understands their meaning. A rough-and-ready way of 
 accomplishing this end would be not to teach them to the 
 child at all ; but then the advantage would be lost of 
 bringing these utterances of supreme wisdom into the 
 pre-eminence which they ought to assume in the adult's 
 mind. The foundations must be laid in the period of 
 adolescence if these peaks of thought are to remain firm 
 and solid in the imagination throughout a lifetime. Nor 
 is it necessarily an evil that a child shall learn and often 
 repeat what he can only very imperfectly comprehend. 
 The mischief arises only when his tutors permit him, or 
 even encourage him, to think that he understands more 
 than he does. 
 
 Let the child be told that year by year he may come to 
 
 322 
 
BAPTISM 323 
 
 see ever deeper meanings in the Lord's Prayer, the Ten 
 Commandments and the Apostles' Creed. Let him learn 
 that even if he lives to be eighty he will never be able 
 fully to comprehend and appreciate them. Let the tutor, 
 with perfect frankness as well as with absolute truth, 
 confess that not even he by any means fully understands. 
 Let the child further know that only as a man comes 
 to have a deep experience and a wide knowledge of life, 
 and has suffered much and thought much and tried 
 faithfully to help on the cause of the good in the world, 
 can he really understand what these great teachings mean. 
 But still more, let him gradually be made to feel that 
 these documents themselves fall far short of the profound 
 realities of human experience which they attempt to 
 formulate, and that the Life is more than the Doctrine 
 which attempts to proclaim it. If the teaching be 
 accompanied by such fundamental qualifications as these, 
 which every true pedagogue will commend, the possibility 
 of holding a creed dogmatically or fanatically or narrowly 
 will be removed. The sting of creeds has always been 
 the sin of the conceit of knowledge, and that is to be 
 traced to a false religious pedagogy. 
 
 In striking contrast to the wisdom which selected the 
 Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments and the 
 Lord's Prayer, and made them the chief contents of the 
 Catechism, is the lack of moral insight and literary 
 ability displayed in the answers which are introduced 
 for the purpose of elucidating these three great formulas 
 of faith. Immediately following the creed are these 
 questions and answers : 
 
 Question. What dost thou chiefly learn in these Articles 
 of thy Belief? 
 
 Answer. First, I learn to believe in God the Father, 
 who hath made me, and all the world. 
 
324 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Secondly, in God the Son, who hath redeemed me, and 
 all mankind. 
 
 Thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me, 
 and all the elect people of God. 
 
 These answers seem to me to be constructed on a 
 totally false principle ; they furnish an example of the 
 worst method of teaching. The creed itself is well 
 expressed and short enough ; if there was a reason for 
 dividing it into three portions, the answer to the first 
 question should have been simply the first portion of the 
 creed ; and so with the other two questions. What is 
 the advantage of saying, " First, I learn to believe in God 
 the Father, who hath made me, and all the world," 
 instead of saying, " I believe in God the Father Almighty, 
 maker of heaven and earth " ? It is true that this first 
 portion of the creed does not say that God is the maker 
 of men ; but, inasmuch as it does not say this, it is 
 questionable whether it is wise or right to compel the 
 child now to declare that he learns from it first that the 
 Father made him. As a matter of fact, he does not learn 
 this from the creed ; it is a question even whether it 
 is implicitly involved in it. The second answer declares 
 also what is not a fact. In the Apostles' Creed there is 
 nothing to the effect that God the Son has redeemed 
 " me and all mankind." That " he shall come to judge 
 the quick and the dead" is a totally different assertion 
 from a declaration of the redemption of all mankind. 
 Furthermore, to have been accurate, this second answer 
 ought to have said not " Who hath redeemed me and all 
 mankind," but " Who came to redeem me and all man- 
 kind." For it is a current truism in orthodox theological 
 circles that a very large portion of mankind have not 
 been and never will be redeemed. The third answer 
 invented by the writers of the Catechism is altogether 
 
BAPTISM 325 
 
 inadequate as a rhume of the third portion of the 
 Apostles' Creed ; and, if it presumes to have picked out 
 only those tenets of Christian faith which are the most 
 important, it makes a distinction which is altogether 
 dangerous from an orthodox point of view. Why- 
 should the child be compelled to say that in the third 
 place the creed teaches him to believe in God the 
 Holy Ghost, who sanctifies him and all the elect people 
 of God, and yet to omit all reference to belief in the 
 holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the 
 forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and 
 the life everlasting ? 
 
 Even from the conventional point of view as to the 
 interpretation of the Creeds, then, these answers of the 
 Church are unsatisfactory. I have said that they were 
 constructed on a totally false principle. After such a 
 statement as the Apostles' Creed, if supplementary state- 
 ments are to be given in elucidation, one should not 
 simply pick out and say over again, in approximately the 
 same words, a few of the same things. A new point of 
 view should have been assumed in the elucidatory answers. 
 When the Catechism of the Prayer Book is revised, the 
 Apostles' Creed should be followed by three answers 
 which will re-interpret the three parts from the point of 
 view of psychology, sociology and ethics pointing to the 
 same realities of life, but in terms of mental science, social 
 philosophy and the distinctively moral judgment. I shall 
 not attempt to propose such answers ; but what their 
 substance would be can easily be gathered from my 
 chapter on the Creeds. 
 
 The three answers which are given in elucidation of the 
 Ten Commandments happily catch something of the 
 dignity and spirit of the original document. With their 
 questions, they are : 
 
326 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Question. What dost thou chiefly learn by these Com- 
 mandments ? 
 
 Answer. I learn two things : my duty towards God, 
 and my duty towards my Neighbour. 
 
 Question. What is thy duty towards God ? 
 
 Answer. My duty towards God, is to believe in him, 
 to fear him, and to love him with all my heart, with all my 
 mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength ; to 
 worship him, to give him thanks, to put my whole trust 
 in him, to call upon him, to honour his holy Name and 
 his Word, and to serve him truly all the days of my life. 
 
 Question. What is thy duty towards thy Neighbour ? 
 
 Answer. My duty towards my Neighbour, is to love 
 him as myself, and to do to all men, as I would they should 
 do unto me : To love, honour, and succour my father and 
 mother : To honour and obey the King, and all that 
 are put in authority under him : To submit myself to all 
 my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters : To 
 order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters : To 
 hurt no body by word nor deed : To be true and just in 
 all my dealing : To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart : 
 To keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my 
 tongue from evil-speaking, lying and slandering : To keep 
 my body in temperance, soberness, and chastity : Not to 
 covet nor desire other men's goods ; but to learn and labour 
 truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that 
 state of life, unto which it shall please God to call me. 
 
 But thus to give further instances and a mere elaboration 
 in other words of what the commandments express in 
 general principle and in aphoristic form is not what here 
 is most needed by the catechumen. Any teacher versed 
 in modern psychology and the principles of education 
 would agree with me that there is little occasion for the 
 child to repeat again what his duties to God are, they 
 having been committed to memory already by the child. 
 What is really needed is an answer to the question, " What 
 is God, who merits my worship, whose name I shall not 
 take in vain, and whose day I shall hallow ? " And when 
 
BAPTISM 327 
 
 the question is asked " What is the God I am to 
 worship ? " it is quite evident that the way for a teacher 
 to answer is to point out, from among all the factors in 
 human experience, that one to which the term refers. 
 Then the child would be made to feel that God exists and 
 to see why he should believe in him, fear him, love him, 
 worship him, thank him, trust him, call upon him, honour 
 and serve him. No greater blow at moral scepticism could 
 be dealt than by such an answer, well forged from undeni- 
 able elements at hand in the experience even of the young. 
 Nor is there occasion, after the last six commandments 
 have been committed to memory and explained at length 
 by the teacher, for requiring another resume, however 
 beautifully expressed, to be committed to memory as if it 
 were on a par with the Decalogue itself. Far more to 
 the purpose would be an answer to the question, " Why 
 ought I to honour father and mother and not kill or be 
 faithless in affection or steal or bear false witness or covet ?" 
 The answer naturally would again be given from the point 
 of view of mental and social experience and of the moral 
 judgment. I believe no one device could do more to 
 raise the popular sense of the imperativeness, inviolability 
 and feasibility of duty to one's neighbour than the learn- 
 ing by heart, on the part of every child in the nation at 
 the age of thirteen or fourteen, along with the Ten 
 Commandments, of a statement indicating the dire 
 consequences to the mind and body not only of oneself 
 but of those one loves, which come from not honouring 
 parents, from murdering, from violating pledges of 
 loyalty, from stealing, false witnessing and coveting. 
 Few young people realise how the whole framework of 
 their lives is dependent upon the performance by others 
 of social duties, and few conceive how much of the suffer- 
 ing is due to the failure on the part of others, both living 
 
328 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 to-day and in past ages, to do their duty to their neigh- 
 bour. Yet the Catechism throws no light whatever on 
 the national motives which prompted the Jewish states- 
 men ages ago to formulate the Ten Commandments. 
 
 In the Catechism the Lord's Prayer is immediately 
 followed by this question and answer : 
 
 Question. What desirest thou of God in this Prayer ? 
 
 Answer. I desire my Lord God our heavenly Father, 
 who is the giver of all goodness, to send his grace unto me, 
 and to all people ; that we may worship him, serve him, 
 and obey him, as we ought to do. And I pray unto God, 
 that he will send us all things that be needful both for our 
 souls and bodies ; and that he will be merciful unto us, and 
 forgive us our sins ; and that it will please him to save and 
 defend us in all dangers ghostly and bodily ; and that he 
 will keep us from all sin and wickedness, and from our 
 ghostly enemy, and from everlasting death. And this I 
 trust he will do of his mercy and goodness, through our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore I say, Amen, So be it. 
 
 Probably there is no jealous lover of the Prayer Book 
 as it is, whose devotion could blind him into approving of 
 this answer. Surely no one who loves the Lord's Prayer 
 can fail to resent this attempt to make it clear to the 
 mind of anyone, young or old, who presumably is being 
 introduced into the mysteries of the Christian religion. 
 For although the answer may point to the details of the 
 Lord's Prayer, it is infinitely more difficult to understand 
 than the prayer itself. It is clumsy and uncouth ; its 
 sentences are constructed with a carelessness wholly un- 
 becoming on the part of those who were appointed to 
 frame it. Why in the first sentence is there a shifting 
 from " I " and " my " to " our," then back again to " me," 
 and then to " we " ? There is nothing in the Lord's 
 Prayer to justify anything but the plural of the first 
 personal pronoun. But the defects of this whole answer 
 
BAPTISM 329 
 
 are of an order which places it below the possibility of 
 emendation. What light, for instance, is thrown upon 
 " Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil " 
 by paraphrasing it into " Save and defend us in all 
 dangers ghostly and bodily, and keep us from all sin 
 and wickedness, and from our ghostly enemy, and from 
 everlasting death " ? And this answer, despite its being 
 twice as long as the Lord's Prayer, finds no room for 
 the characteristic and essential qualification which the 
 prayer gives to the clause " Forgive us our trespasses." 
 
 There is needed, in order to supplement the Lord's 
 Prayer, the question, " What do the different parts of 
 this prayer mean ? " and a brief answer which would 
 indicate the mental, social and moral significance of 
 each clause. It should be briefly pointed out to the 
 catechumen that the prayer can be fully entered into only 
 by one who is devoting his life in co-operation with 
 others for the establishment of social justice on earth, 
 and has surrendered the pursuit of wealth, forgiven all 
 offenders against himself, and avoids all exposure to moral 
 evil which is not inevitable in his mission. 
 
 The series of questions and answers which follows the 
 part which I have just been criticising is more nearly in 
 accord with the requirements of educational science. The 
 real information is given on matters essential to a right 
 understanding of the Church. Nothing could, for 
 instance, be better pedagogically than the following three 
 questions and answers : 
 
 Question. How many Sacraments hath Christ ordained 
 in his Church? 
 
 Answer. Two only, as generally necessary to salvation, 
 that is to say, Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord. 
 
 Question. What meanest thou by this word Sacrament ? 
 
 Answer. I mean an outward and visible sign of an 
 
330 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 inward and spiritual grace given unto us, ordained by 
 Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, 
 and a pledge to assure us thereof. 
 
 Question. How many parts are there in a Sacrament ? 
 
 Answer. Two ; the outward visible sign, and the 
 inward spiritual grace. 
 
 The answer to the next question, " What is the outward 
 visible sign or form in Baptism ? " seems to me not 
 correct. It should not be " Water," but " Washing with 
 water." The reply to the question, " What is the inward 
 and spiritual grace ? " is at least well conceived and 
 expressed, although it would require much elucidation to 
 bring home its real significance. It is " A death unto sin 
 and a new birth unto righteousness. For being by nature 
 born in sin and the children of wrath, we are hereby made 
 the children of grace." Then follows the question, 
 " What is required of persons to be baptised ? " to which 
 the answer is given, " Repentance, whereby they forsake 
 sin; and Faith, whereby they stedfastly believe the 
 promises of God made to them in that Sacrament." The 
 next question and answer read : 
 
 Why then are Infants baptised, when by reason of their 
 tender age they cannot perform them ? 
 
 Because they promise them both by their Sureties ; 
 which promise, when they come to age, themselves are 
 bound to perform. 
 
 This question and answer, of course, would fall away if 
 infant baptism were abolished. In case of such an event, it 
 might be well to substitute the question, " Why are infants 
 not baptised ? " and the answer, " Because by reason of 
 their tender age they cannot promise repentance and faith." 
 
 In regard to the Catechism, as in regard to the special 
 rites of the Church, the immediate problem is not revision 
 and indeed not even re-interpretation of formulae already 
 sanctioned by the Church, but rather the formulation and 
 
BAPTISM 331 
 
 adoption of alternative items. The introduction of a new 
 Catechism in place of the old is not within the range of 
 practical politics, but much nearer is the permission to 
 bishops to use certain alternatives. It is not my purpose 
 to submit any such compositions to my reader, as it 
 would be easy for him to surmise from the foregoing 
 chapters what would be their substance. I am more 
 anxious to win his consideration for a ceremony which in 
 my judgment would serve the interests of national 
 religious unity, were it (or something like it) to be adopted 
 as an alternative to the rites of adult baptism and confirma- 
 tion. Such adoption would leave all those perfectly free 
 who prefer the present forms ; but, however defective the 
 alternative I submit, there will probably be no disputing 
 my contention that it would prove itself congenial to the 
 spiritual requirements of all those earnest and devoted 
 citizens who now hold themselves aloof from the Church 
 organisation because they are agnostics, rationalists and 
 scientific sceptics of supernaturalism, and are believers in 
 religious democracy as opposed to the supremacy of the 
 clergy. Having such persons in mind (and including 
 myself among them), I have asked myself what should 
 be the ritualistic act of admission, what ideas it would be 
 socially expedient to incorporate into a form of initiation 
 into the Church, and what would be the best literary 
 embodiments of these ideas. As regards the sign, for 
 several reasons it might be better to adopt one which in 
 no wise resembled immersion in water. Although less 
 harmonious with and suggestive of the spiritual meaning 
 of admission, a new sign would be free because of its 
 novelty from any associations repellent to the scientific 
 and democratic mind. It might, moreover, be more 
 expressive of that sense of identification of God with the 
 higher selfhood of the individual which is so characteristic 
 
332 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 of the new religious thought of our day that is, it might 
 express the inwardness of the sources of redemption 
 better than could the act of immersion. Of such a 
 character would be the simple act, on the part of the 
 candidate for admission, of rising in the congregation 
 when called upon by its representative to do so, in token 
 of his commitment to the Church's work and principles ; 
 and accordingly I assume in the formula which I submit 
 that this is to constitute the ritualistic sign. The idea, 
 with an expression of which it seems to me the rite of 
 initiation should open, is that of faith in the spiritual 
 unity of the Church-nation, for it is conscious identifica- 
 tion with the Church-nation that the candidate is seeking, 
 and the motive must be belief in the sanctity and spiritual 
 necessity of the merging of his own will with the 
 universal will of the Church ; it must be a recognition of 
 the spiritual organism of society as the ultimate source of 
 individual character and as the one reality for the defence 
 of which the sacrifice of self is no sacrifice. 
 
 Perhaps no finer and stronger embodiment of this idea 
 can be found in the literature of any nation than the lines 
 from George Eliot's Spanish Gipsy where Zarca declares 
 loyalty to one another to be the faith of his people : 
 
 Ours is a faith 
 
 Taught by no priest, but by our beating hearts : 
 Faith to each other : the fidelity 
 Of men whose pulses leap with kindred fire, 
 Who in the flash of eyes, the clasp of hands, 
 Nay, in the silent bodily presence, feel 
 The mystic stirrings of a common life 
 That makes the many one. 
 
 The opening of the rite with the speaking of these lines 
 by the minister could not but fill the heart of the initiate 
 with the glad enthusiasm of spiritual fellowship ; but, in 
 
BAPTISM 333 
 
 contrast to this idea of surrender of the individual to the 
 general will of the Church-nation, and as a corrective to 
 its excessive dominance over the spirit of the novice, 
 should be introduced as a second idea the Church's own 
 high estimation and sense of the infinite preciousness of 
 each individual member. The newcomer must not be 
 overpowered in his individuality by the sense even of the 
 Social Self ; for, while seeming to lose, he is ultimately to 
 find his true individuality in the life of the nation. And 
 this rejoicing of the Church over the entrance of the 
 novice would be not simply an idea, but an immediate 
 and present reality, if the speaking of the opening words 
 were to be followed by the chanting of Walt Whitman's 
 undying hymn of religious reverence for the highest that 
 waits intrinsically in every individual mind : 
 
 Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the 
 
 centre figure of all, 
 From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of 
 
 gold-colour'd light ; 
 But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without 
 
 its nimbus of gold-colour'd light. 
 From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman 
 
 it streams, effulgently flowing for ever. 
 Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you 
 
 be my poem. 
 
 I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you. 
 None has understood you, but I understand you ; 
 None has done justice to you you have not done justice 
 
 to yourself; 
 None but has found you imperfect ; I only find no 
 
 imperfection in you ; 
 None but would subordinate you ; I only am he who will 
 
 never consent to subordinate you ; 
 I only am he who places over you no master, owner, 
 
 better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. 
 There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied 
 
 in you; 
 
334 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good 
 
 is in you ; 
 
 No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you ; 
 No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits 
 
 for you. 
 I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than 
 
 I sing the songs of the glory of you. 
 
 The chanting of these words would tend to stir the 
 heart of the whole congregation with gladness, loyalty 
 and the deference of welcome. The very spirit of the 
 Church moves through the strong rhythm of Whitman's 
 lines and glows and shines in their imagery, and would 
 enfold the newcomer in the tenderness of their con- 
 fidential tone of intimacy. Indeed, only the Church 
 since it alone forgives and has the power to wash away 
 sins can announce the essential perfection and beauty, the 
 inherent humanity of every individual soul. But a third 
 idea is suggested by the occasion. The Church not only 
 rejoices in the newcomer and encourages him by recog- 
 nition of the spiritual worth of every moral agent ; she 
 accompanies her gladness of redeeming love with explanation 
 and instruction, with guidance, both rational and practical. 
 The Church is not a new-born nor an inexperienced 
 organisation ; it has been shaped, drilled and strengthened 
 in its work of redemption by centuries of experiment and 
 discipline ; it has learned to know both itself and the world 
 in which, for the world's sake, it has struggled to keep alive 
 and to gain ascendency. Therefore it is fitting that the 
 liturgy of admission, although it may begin with the ex- 
 pression of the initiate's glad surrender and the Church's 
 joyous welcome, should pass forthwith to his instruction in 
 the idea which is the essential bond of Church fellowship. 
 The novice should be illuminated as to the specific end 
 and direction of the step he is taking. He ought to be 
 
BAPTISM 335 
 
 told as nearly as possible what he is doing, and the nature 
 of his act should be contrasted with similar yet not 
 identical acts with which it might be confused. 
 
 The closest approach to such a statement which I have 
 been able to find is in the chapters entitled " Christ's 
 Winnowing Fan" and "Membership in Christ's King- 
 dom," in Sir John Seeley's Ecce Homo. Therein, two 
 spurious tests of membership, the falsity of which the 
 Church is only now beginning to detect, are exposed 
 with simplicity and lucidity ; but a still greater triumph 
 of historical and ethical genius is Seeley's formulation of 
 the only wise and just condition of membership. Although 
 he was here writing chapters in a book, yet the nature of 
 his style and the spirit which informs it are such that one 
 perhaps could not do better than to adopt as closely as 
 possible his very words as a formula in the Church's 
 ceremony of initiation. Using his chapter thus, one 
 might construct a statement like the following for the 
 instruction of the initiate as to the meaning of Church 
 membership : 
 
 The Church Ethical rejects two possible tests of member- 
 ship and accepts a third. She rejects correctness of outward 
 conduct and soundness of intellectual belief. She accepts, 
 instead, that rudiment of goodness called moral faith. 
 
 As to correctness of outward conduct, she does not ask 
 that a man shall actually be good before becoming a member ; 
 but she demands that he shall admire goodness and fervently 
 desire to become good ; in other words, that he shall be 
 stirred by moral enthusiasm and steadied by moral faith. 
 
 The reason for not making goodness, but the desire to 
 be good, the test of membership, is that a man may be 
 potentially just and merciful, yet from defect of training 
 he may be actually neither. We want a test which shall 
 admit all who have it in them to be good, whether their 
 good qualities be trained or not. Such a test is found in 
 moral faith. He who, when goodness is impressively put 
 
336 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 before him, exhibits an instinctive loyalty to it, starts for- 
 ward to take its side, trusts himself to it ; such a man has 
 faith, and the root of the matter is in such a man. He 
 may have habits of vice, but the loyal and faithful instinct 
 in him will place him above many that practise virtue. 
 He may be rude in thought and character, but he will 
 spontaneously gravitate towards what is right. Other 
 virtues can scarcely thrive without a fine natural organisa- 
 tion and a happy training. But the most neglected and 
 ungifted of men may make a beginning with moral faith. 
 Other virtues want cultivation ; but even in half-brutal 
 countenances this faith will light up a glimmer of nobleness. 
 He who can do little else, can wonder and worship and 
 enthusiastically obey. He who cannot of himself know 
 what is right can know that someone else knows ; he who 
 cannot find the way himself can follow a guide ; he who is 
 incapable of justice may be capable of fidelity ; he who 
 is far from perfect may give himself up to a cause or an 
 idea which he feels to be great and good ; he who under- 
 stands little may have his sins forgiven because he loves 
 much. 
 
 For the same reasons the Church does not demand 
 soundness of intellectual belief. She sees that it is as hard 
 to think rightly as to act rightly or even to feel rightly. 
 She knows that if the way to right action is beset by 
 corrupt habits and misleading passions, the path to truth is 
 overgrown with prejudices and strewn with fallen theories 
 and decaying systems which hide it from view. It were 
 monstrous, therefore, that error of intellectual belief 
 should be severely punished. The world at large think it 
 quite easy to find truth and inexcusable to miss it. And 
 no wonder ! For by finding truth they mean only learn- 
 ing by rote the maxims current around them. But 
 not so the Church. She, moreover, has still another 
 ground for not requiring intellectual conformity. She 
 exacts something higher the power of arriving at truth. 
 Stern censure she visits upon those who, overwhelmed with 
 difficulties or afraid of public opinion, stop striving to 
 see for themselves and rest content with pretending that 
 they believe. 
 
 The Church Ethical is lenient of error but cannot 
 tolerate mere outward conformity, because moral enthusiasm, 
 
BAPTISM 337 
 
 which is her test of membership, not only purifies the heart 
 and fortifies the will, but opens the eyes of reason, giving 
 clearness of vision, understanding, and the power to think 
 for oneself. 
 
 Thus the Church calls to her fellowship only those who 
 love and want to serve mankind ; thus, also, her call itself 
 becomes her winnowing fan, separating those who do not 
 care for mankind from those who do, the chaff from the 
 wheat, that the wheat, gathered together, may be the more 
 of use. 
 
 These words of ethical instruction would not fail to 
 create in the mind of the novice a sense of new 
 spiritual liberty and power and an aspiration to join his 
 own to the energies of others in tasks of human service. 
 
 Thus directed and strengthened in moral faith, the 
 initiate might now well be reminded that the service of 
 others is also his own truest peace and perfection. This 
 idea would be exquisitely communicated to all present by 
 the singing of George Eliot's well-known hymn of praise 
 and prayer : 
 
 O may I join the choir invisible 
 
 Of those immortal dead who live again 
 
 In minds made better by their presence ; live 
 
 In pulses stirred to generosity, 
 
 In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
 
 For miserable aims that end with self, 
 
 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
 
 And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
 
 To vaster issues. 
 
 So to live is heaven. 
 
 But we have not yet exhausted the definite thoughts 
 which admission to the Church naturally suggests. After 
 such expressions of scorn for miserable aims that end 
 with self, it would be a still more terrible thing than 
 
 without them if the initiate were now hypocritically to 
 
 22 
 
338 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 undergo the symbolical act of admission to an ethical 
 fellowship, or if the older members were insincerely to 
 pledge themselves to loyalty to the newcomer. At this 
 point, then, in the ceremony the novice should be 
 reminded of the imperative duty of self-examination. 
 There is to be found, in the Prayer Book's preliminary 
 invitation to attend and participate in Holy Communion, 
 an appeal of this order, expressed in discreet and dignified 
 phrase. As one reads it, one cannot escape feeling that 
 the advice it administers is even more essential in the rite 
 of initiation than in that for the renewal of loyalty. There 
 would be an advantage in partly appropriating this appeal, 
 in that the retention of its phrases would preserve a 
 continuity of association and thus lend historic depth of 
 vista to the ceremony. Accordingly, in the following 
 address, into the midst of which is introduced the proposed 
 ceremonial act to serve as a sign of initiation, I have incor- 
 porated some of the phrases from the preliminary invitation 
 of the Church's Communion Service : 
 
 When we enter into a society which avows moral 
 enthusiasm to be its bond of union, it is befitting that we 
 consider the dignity and holy responsibility of such fellow- 
 ship. For there would be great peril both to ourselves and 
 others in unworthily and hypocritically professing member- 
 ship. We should, therefore, search our own conscience, 
 and not lightly and after the manner of self-deceivers, but 
 so that we may enter holy and clean into such a spiritual 
 union. 
 
 The ways and means thereto are : First, to examine our 
 lives and conversations by the known and accepted rules of 
 righteousness ; and wherein we shall perceive ourselves to 
 have offended, by will, word or deed, there to deplore our 
 fault, and to confess it to ourselves with full and deliberate 
 purpose of amendment of life. And if we shall perceive 
 our offences to be such as are not only inward and against 
 conscience, but also against our neighbours, we shall 
 
BAPTISM 339 
 
 reconcile ourselves to them, making restitution and render- 
 ing satisfaction, according to the uttermost of our powers, 
 for all injuries and wrongs done by us to any others. We 
 should be likewise ready to forgive others that have 
 offended us, as we would have forgiveness of our offences. 
 Otherwise, membership in a church and participation in its 
 work may but increase our moral obliquity. 
 
 Therefore, if any one of you who are now to enter this 
 society be in secret no lover of righteousness, but a hinderer 
 of it, licentious, or an oppressor of his fellows, or be in 
 malice or envy, or any other grievous crime, let him root 
 out this evil from his heart and life, lest a profession of 
 allegiance to our fellowship add hypocrisy to his weakness, 
 harden his heart and corrupt the good that be in him. 
 
 And if there be any of you that cannot quiet his own 
 conscience within, but requires further comfort or counsel, 
 let him seek out from among our number some discreet, 
 just and wise friend, and open his grief; that by the 
 ministry of our fellowship he may be healed and comforted. 
 
 The following persons have expressed their desire to 
 become members of this church : 
 
 (Here would be read the names.) 
 
 I therefore, on behalf of this church, ask you whom I have 
 named, to rise and stand in this assembly (the new members 
 rhe\ as a pledge of your sincerity, and of your fidelity not 
 only to our principles but to all of us as members and to 
 the society itself as a whole. We need you. It is true 
 that a fellowship in devotion to the cause of the good in 
 the world, however few in numbers, is a mighty strength 
 and consolation to each member. But the larger the 
 number of the loyal, the higher rises the spiritual tide of 
 confidence and hope, the clearer becomes the vision of the 
 perfect life, and the easier its attainment. We may need 
 you also simply as friends in the everyday relations of life, 
 to advise us when we err, to comfort us when we are 
 afflicted in mind, body or estate, and to minister to us in 
 want. We are a society of friends, not only in the higher 
 pursuits of life, but bound together in all the interests of 
 our common humanity. And we may have occasion to 
 call upon you for help. We shall do so, knowing that 
 we shall find you true and ready, considerate and kind. 
 
340 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 And you also may need us. Do not attempt to lead the 
 higher life in isolation for your own sake as well as ours. 
 Share your life not only with special ones of us, but with 
 our fellowship as a whole. If any ill, any temptation, any 
 vexation, any trial come upon you, it is our privilege to 
 know, and to serve you. Do not wait until dire extremity 
 of any kind overtake you, but come betimes, that the 
 worst may not befall you and us. Have the confidence of 
 unsuspicious trust. You will not find us perfect ; but if 
 you put in your claim upon us, if you take us at our best 
 at our word uttered at this hour we shall not fail you. 
 
 I therefore request all the members present, as a pledge 
 of their fidelity to you severally, and as a renewal of their 
 loyalty to our society and its principles, to rise (Here the 
 members rise) and stand, while we join in singing dough's 
 great hymn of fellow-help, " In our hands we will upbear 
 thee." 
 
 HYMN 
 
 When the enemy is near thee, 
 In our hands we will upbear thee ; 
 He shall neither scathe nor scare thee, 
 He shall fly thee and shall fear thee. 
 Call on us ! 
 
 Call when all good friends have left thee, 
 Of good sights and sounds bereft thee ; 
 Call when hope and heart are sinking, 
 And the brain is sick with thinking : 
 Help, O help ! 
 
 When the panic comes upon thee, 
 Hope and choice have all foregone thee, 
 Fate and force are closing o'er thee, 
 And but one way stands before thee, 
 Call on us ! 
 
 Oh, and if thou dost not call, 
 Be but faithful, that is all. 
 Go right on, and close behind thee 
 There shall follow still and find thee 
 Help, sure help. 
 
BAPTISM 341 
 
 None of the elements which I have thus far proposed 
 for a rite of initiation, although each contributes a thought 
 and an emotion of its own, indicates the disciplines into 
 which the new member enters. Yet such an indication 
 ought not to be omitted, since a formula spoken in a 
 ceremony has a weight tenfold that of the same statement 
 read privately in a book, and since a ceremony ought to 
 be utilised to the full for the benefit of the participants 
 and of the Church herself. 
 
 Before submitting a formula setting forth the spiritual 
 functions of the Church, let me again remind the reader 
 that a religious rite is not primarily for aesthetic entertain- 
 ment. It should not, of course, be so long or monotonous 
 or so difficult to understand as to fatigue the listener ; 
 indeed, it must interest him, and to this extent be an 
 entertainment, in order that its instruction may not be in 
 vain ; but up to the point of not wearying and exhaust- 
 ing the average power of attention, it should offer as much 
 real instruction as possible and should be as serious and 
 strenuous as it can be without creating impatience and 
 protest. It should offer more food for thought than can 
 on the instant be fully assimilated. Indeed, it should be 
 so compact of nutritive substance that the novice for the 
 rest of his life may return to it again and again and each 
 time be able to draw new strength from it. There is 
 another reason for as great compactness as is consistent 
 with lucidity : a liturgy which is intended to be heard 
 many times must be practically inexhaustible in suggestive- 
 ness, for then it will continually, by appealing afresh to the 
 soul, become more and more loved ; otherwise it will in 
 time be outgrown and finally discarded. With a feeling 
 that it is not so much beauty of form as depth and 
 appositeness of meaning which enables a formula to stand 
 the test of long familiarity, I would suggest the following 
 
342 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 abstract homily on the disciplines of the Church as the 
 next item in its rite of initiation : 
 
 In joining the Church, you enter into a threefold dis- 
 cipline. You come more intimately than before under the 
 influence of the Moral Ideal itself, of Individual Men and 
 Women striving to embody it in their lives, and of the 
 Church as a spiritual fellowship. 
 
 As to the influence of the Moral Ideal itself : in joining 
 the Church you vow direct allegiance to the law of duty 
 within the spirit of every man. This is the discipline of 
 Reason. The inner law enjoins upon you self-respect, 
 self-reliance and the falling back upon your intuition as 
 upon your God ; it demands the exercise of your moral 
 judgment and the seeking after truth for yourself. This 
 discipline will quicken your insight ; it will beget in you 
 understanding and wisdom. It will lead you to the dis- 
 covery of new meanings and new duties in life. It will 
 emancipate you from outworn traditions and the tyrannies 
 of public opinion. It will stimulate you to moral originality, 
 and train you to welcome and appreciate originality in others. 
 It will arouse in you fresh interest in all spheres of thought 
 and fact, and make you bold to become pioneers of better 
 institutions. 
 
 But by itself the discipline of Reason is not adequate. 
 If it be not supplemented, it makes a man cold and critical, 
 pedantic and unsocial, mechanical in life and blind to the 
 manifold beauty and richness of the world of nature and 
 humanity. In addition to it, a man must have intimate 
 communion with the life of good men and women. This 
 is the discipline of Living Personality. It is equal in bene- 
 ficence and dignity with the discipline of Reason. Not 
 to avail ourselves of the friendship of the wise is as fatal as 
 to neglect the use of our own moral intelligence. It is the 
 companionship of the good which keeps us human, sane 
 and pure, humble, grateful and glad - 9 for it is easy with the 
 good to be good. Grace and beauty of mind come from 
 contact with the minds of others. 
 
 Let no one of you, therefore, set Reason or the Moral 
 Law above Persons who manifest it. Never forget that, 
 while the ethical ideal is over us and above us, it emanates 
 
BAPTISM 343 
 
 from us ; it has sprung out of the actual experience of man- 
 kind and grown brighter through the ages. The vision of 
 what ought to be is the secret heart and meaning of what 
 is ; it is not an alien standard imposed upon us. Do not 
 worship the Moral Ideal in its abstract dignity only ; but, 
 since it is the soul of the actual, turn equally to good persons, 
 whether they be preserved for you in literature and history 
 or whether they bless your daily life by their presence. 
 
 But Reason, even when reinforced by the influence of 
 Good Persons, is still not adequate to secure the rounded 
 development of your character. Despite the company of 
 the best nay, because of it you may be in danger of moral 
 exclusiveness, of intolerance, of spiritual haughtiness, and 
 even of cruelty towards the less gifted, the vicious and the 
 unfortunate. You may be tempted to avoid contact with 
 those who, although they ofFend, may need you most and 
 would cleanse you best. You may lose your grip of the 
 responsibilities of life. You may be in danger of becoming 
 idly good. You must belong to an organised movement 
 for the redemption of the world j only absorption in such 
 a movement can give you the strength, enthusiasm and 
 compassion you need. 
 
 This third discipline we find in the influence of the 
 Church as a whole upon its members. The Spirit of the 
 Church will not permit you to rest except as you seek to 
 make its fellowship all-embracing. It is not satisfied if 
 anyone is left out. The enthusiasm of the Church's 
 mission creates in us a thirst for the co-operating love of all 
 mankind. 
 
 The Moral Ideal, moreover, is essentially social, and can 
 never be adequately manifested in an individual person, 
 however holy. Only a Church-nation is able to reveal the 
 fullness of human perfection. 
 
 You, who have now entered into this fellowship, must 
 therefore be loyal not only to Reason, and not only to one 
 holy man or to many good persons, but to a communion 
 devoted to the ideal of humanity. 
 
 It would be fatal, however, to magnify even the Church 
 at the expense of righteous persons or the law of reason ; 
 not even to the Church must be subordinated either in- 
 dividual persons or that vision which may never be fully 
 embodied in any society. 
 
344 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Let each one of you, then, submit his spirit equally to 
 Reason that gives Law, to Friends who give Love, and to 
 the Community that gives Life. 
 
 Following this homily, a hymn of social prophecy might 
 be sung, and then the service ended by the minister with 
 Keble's exquisite words depicting the serene strength of 
 those whom the secret of the higher life sustains : 
 
 There are in this loud stunning tide 
 
 Of human care and crime, 
 With whom the melodies abide 
 
 Of the everlasting chime ; 
 Who carry music in their heart 
 Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, 
 Plying their daily toil with busier feet 
 Because their secret souls a holier strain repeat. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE COMMUNION SERVICE 
 
 IN the sacrament of the Lord's Supper one sees the life 
 and thought of the Christian Church both at their best 
 and at their worst. This is what one would naturally 
 expect : for if there be, as I believe, a fundamental error 
 in the Christian scheme of redemption its trust in 
 superhuman agents then in its most intense sacrament 
 this error would find its boldest embodiment. At the 
 same time, it is natural that here also the ethical and 
 human elements should be manifested in their highest 
 power. 
 
 Indeed, it is characteristic of Judaism and Christianity 
 throughout their evolution, that those ceremonies and 
 doctrines which are of greatest social utility are at the 
 same time most in need of radical revision. It has been 
 inevitably so. The tracing of inner experiences to the 
 action of superhuman agents has been an attempt at a 
 philosophical or scientific explanation of the profounder 
 sequences of the moral life. These deeper facts did not 
 find a place in the order of everyday events ; and they, 
 therefore, were especially attributed to preternatural 
 sources. Hence one may be almost certain that, wher- 
 ever theology most defies the law of secondary causes, 
 there lies hidden the deepest and tenderest of experiences. 
 
 345 
 
346 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Thus it comes about that the heights of moral discipline 
 have always hitherto been also the pinnacles of super- 
 naturalism ; and that dogmas, instead of being merely 
 barren peaks raised by fantastic and empty fears, have 
 been theoretical coverings to human insight at its clearest 
 and human love at its purest. Denude the Church's 
 forms and doctrines of their supernaturalism, and for the 
 first time you will find their full significance and beauty. 
 You remove a disguise which concealed the underlying 
 mental and social truths. The chief points of theological 
 contest are therefore now again the centres of interest for 
 the scientific investigator of mind and morals and for the 
 practical statesman who would reconstruct society. 
 
 It thus becomes easy for us to understand why the 
 lightnings of controversial wit have flashed incessantly 
 for a thousand years over the communion-table. The 
 illusion that the ethical power of this sacrament was due 
 to the presence of a supernatural agency began early to 
 take possession of men's imaginations. So deep was the 
 sense of intimacy with Jesus Christ which was induced 
 by participation in this rite, so helpful was it in allaying 
 inward temptation and so quickening to enthusiasm for 
 the fellowship of the Church, that already in the second 
 century a belief arose in the actual presence of Christ's 
 body and blood in the bread and wine. Soon the idea 
 grew that in the Communion Service a bloodless sacrifice 
 was each time repeated. In the ninth century it began 
 to be maintained that the bread and wine were actually 
 transformed into the body and blood of Christ. The 
 bread and wine, some thought, ceased to exist except in 
 form, taste and smell ; others thought that the substance 
 remained, while the efficacy and power were changed. In 
 1215 transubstantiation became an article of faith in the 
 Roman Church ; in 1672 in the Greek. In the thirteenth 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 347 
 
 session of the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century, 
 it was declared, " If anyone shall say that in the holy 
 sacrament of the Eucharist there remains the substance of 
 bread and wine, together with the body and blood of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and shall deny that wonderful and 
 singular conversion of the wine into blood, the species 
 of bread and wine alone remaining, .... let him be 
 anathema." Luther, less consistently, adopted the 
 doctrine that the substance of the bread and wine con- 
 tinued together with the body and blood of Christ. 
 Calvin declared that, accompanying the rite, a super- 
 natural change took place in the soul of the communicant. 
 No body of Christians has doubted the efficacious presence 
 of a living Christ in some mysterious manner through 
 the Eucharist. The Roman Church believes that Christ 
 is entire in both bread and wine, and that accordingly only 
 one kind need be administered to the laity. Witnesses 
 have testified that they have seen the wafers bleed. 
 
 How pitiable these errors of pre-scientific subtlety 
 appear to-day ! How hard to conceive that men should 
 have once supposed the moral personality of Jesus to 
 need any such support, or that the benefits of the 
 Eucharist would be lessened even if the belief in the 
 miraculous action of a Christ still energising fell away ! 
 Happily, this question was one of the few points of 
 philosophical interest in which the Protestant reformers 
 dared to differ from the Church of Rome. The principle 
 underlying their rejection of transubstantiation formed 
 one intellectual stronghold of the Reformation, and has 
 proved an armoury wherein weapons have been forged 
 for the cause of naturalistic religion and of freedom of 
 thought. 
 
 On account of the supernaturalistic interpretation of its 
 moral power, the Lord's Supper, as we know it to-day, 
 
348 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 has well-nigh ceased to be, in any sense of the word, a 
 means of communion among men. It is inconceivable 
 that there could be any religious rite devised and un- 
 deniably there is no other in existence from which 
 purely human fellowship and the consciousness of human 
 fellowship are so entirely banished. Those who com- 
 municate testify that by this sacrament their spirits are 
 caught up and lifted wholly above all thought of any 
 creature or any love of any creature, and are merged in 
 the supernatural Christ. A person who has never com- 
 municated, but looks upon this sacrament with the eyes 
 of an impartial student of religion, is amazed by the 
 incongruity between the name "communion" and the 
 reciprocal isolation of the communicants. Rich and poor, 
 high-born and low, participate together in this form, on 
 the tacit understanding that it commits them to no actual 
 human fellowship. So much is this the case, that the 
 word " communion," as understood among Roman 
 Catholics, indicates communion only with the Creator, 
 and not with man. So bold also is the recognition of 
 these facts of the case in the Church of England, that 
 often in country parishes all the distinctions of social 
 gradation are carefully preserved throughout this so-called 
 communion. First the squire and his family come to the 
 chancel-rail, then the parson's wife and family, then the 
 local doctor and the schoolmaster, and so on down the 
 scale to the peasants. It is quite clear that, if there be 
 any sort of communion in such a celebration of the Lord's 
 Supper, it is not of one human spirit with another in 
 recognition of our common humanity. 
 
 If it be argued that the Lord's Supper never pretended 
 to be a communion of man with man, but only of each 
 individual soul with its Maker and Redeemer, such a 
 defence of it must be met by two irresistible arguments. 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 349 
 
 Ethically, that God is no God no true object of human 
 worship and no deliverer from human sin who can be 
 approached in any other way than through human fellow- 
 ship and human communion. Not only must one first 
 be reconciled with one's brother, but the only gift which 
 even then one may offer to one's God is the reconciliation 
 achieved. This is the only gift acceptable to a deity 
 worthy of worship. But again, communion presupposes 
 reciprocity and some sort of equality, some form of give- 
 and-take ; whereas the spiritual discipline now practised 
 at the Communion Service is one of absolute surrender of 
 the finite creature to his infinite Creator is annihilation 
 of individuality, that a superhuman Christ alone may live 
 in each. 
 
 If it be retorted that, whether it be right or not to 
 designate it as a communion, the Lord's Supper is the 
 supreme sacrament of the moral life, the rejoinder must 
 again be an ethical one, which of course can appeal only 
 to him that hath ears to hear : the supreme need of 
 man is spiritual communion with man, and the supreme 
 sacrament of ethical religion must be one of human 
 communion. 
 
 Furthermore, the highest spiritual ecstasy compatible 
 with individual self-consciousness is that of the spiritual 
 love of equals needing and serving one another. And 
 if one cites, in justification of the present character of 
 the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, its awful solemnity, 
 which would be sacrificed if the ritual were to be pervaded 
 with a sense of human fellowship, it must be protested 
 that there is such a thing as an annihilating degree of 
 solemnity, and that this is reached the instant the 
 consciousness of human fellowship is overawed. What- 
 ever obliterates man's selfhood is at enmity with him ; 
 and while the cultivation of that peculiar ecstasy which 
 
350 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 one experiences when one surrenders one's moral selfhood 
 to the Infinite may be blissful and may become a habit 
 and a passion, no mortal was ever the better for it, nor 
 any society the manlier or more just or sane. 
 
 It is further to be noted that the Lord's Supper is not 
 now an actual meal ; nor has it been since the second 
 century. Had it continued to be a spiritual communion, 
 it would undoubtedly have remained a real occasion for 
 satisfying physical hunger and thirst ; for the dwindling of 
 the meal to a mere vestige of itself has been undoubtedly 
 due to the corresponding fading away of the spirit of 
 equal intercourse. On the other hand, had the rite 
 preserved its character as an actual supper, it would 
 never have ceased to be a quickening symbol of fellow- 
 ship among Church members. Originally the bread and 
 wine were the actual diet of the people, the everyday 
 food and drink ; and on the occasion when Christ himself 
 instituted the ceremonial, he and his friends were together 
 for the purpose of satisfying hunger and thirst ; they 
 were partaking of their regular evening repast. At the 
 close of this he introduced the ritual act. There was 
 nothing unusual either in the materials selected or in the 
 quantity consumed. The meal was as commonplace in 
 these particulars as an evening repast of bread, cheese 
 and beer would be to-day for British working men, or 
 on a Sunday a midday dinner of roast beef, vegetables 
 and pudding. As a modern instance of a meal almost 
 fully analogous to the Last Supper, one might cite the 
 British institution of a social tea among members of 
 enthusiastic reform movements ; for here an ideal bond 
 unites the communicants, but at the same time they meet 
 to satisfy physical hunger and thirst. 
 
 We see, therefore, that originally the sacrament of 
 the Lord's Supper was a human communion and was 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 351 
 
 part of an ordinary meal. It continued so for a century 
 at least. Indeed, during this period the sacrament came 
 more and more to be interpreted as a continuation of the 
 Passover supper, Jesus Christ himself being regarded as 
 the paschal lamb which had been offered in sacrifice. Now, 
 at the festival of the Passover, in which all the Jews 
 participated, the meal was no mere pretence. According 
 to priestly rule, no more than twenty persons were 
 expected to share one lamb. 
 
 In ancient custom, all meals in common partook of the 
 character of a sacrament. Unfortunately, however, there 
 arose soon among the Christians a distinction and then 
 a separation between the Eucharist and the Love-feast. 
 More and more from the Love-feast fell away the ethical 
 and religious symbolism, and with it the ethical and 
 religious spirit, and the dining and the boon companion- 
 ship became all in all ; while more and more from the 
 Eucharist fell away the feasting and the fellowship, until 
 there was nothing left but the sense of a supernatural 
 agency operating ethically by miracle. Soon the Agape 
 degenerated into excess and revelry, as was natural when 
 the higher meaning was taken away from it. The result 
 is that to-day the Church has no rite which distinctly 
 symbolises the continued loyalty of Church members to 
 one another and to the Church ; and there is no custom 
 among Christians as Christians of sitting down to a 
 common meal together like equals, friends and comrades. 
 A church, to be sure, may have its soup-kitchen for the 
 poor ; but no one could mistake the meal partaken of there 
 for a human communion in devotion to the social ideal. 
 
 The Lord's Supper was perfect from the point of view 
 of the meaning and purpose of ritual only so long as it 
 remained an actual meal in common symbolising church 
 fellowship. As I have pointed out in the chapters 
 
352 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 on Baptism, the bodily acts which the realism of ritual 
 necessitates must not themselves be an imitation or a 
 sham. Just as the philosophy of ceremonial required 
 that the baptism should be a real washing, so it requires 
 that the repast in the Lord's Supper should be a real 
 meal in common. 
 
 It is always so with ritual, as distinct from stage-play. 
 A religion is degenerate when the bodily acts of its 
 ritual are a make-believe. But the form in which the 
 Lord's Supper has survived is doubly degenerate : not 
 only has the symbol shrunk to a mere mock-meal, but 
 the spiritual event now signified is not an event of which a 
 meal is a happy or natural symbol. 
 
 When, as with Paul, the reality symbolised is the 
 unity of the living members of the Church, the inward 
 and spiritual meaning is an immediate and ever-present 
 reality, which depends upon no remote event nor upon 
 any supernatural world of redeeming agencies. The 
 spiritual event is the actual blending of the minds and 
 hearts and souls of those present. The thing signified is 
 as independent of belief in supernatural agencies as is 
 the physical effect of the symbolic act itself. Here is the 
 perfection of ritual. There is nothing more mysterious 
 about it than there is in the formal act of signing a 
 cheque and thus transferring ^1000 from oneself to 
 another. The signing is a formality, but it is an 
 indispensable condition of the transfer ; yet the transfer 
 accompanies it as the reality of the symbol, and is 
 independent of remote events or of miraculous agencies. 
 All that is required is that the signature be real, the 
 cheque an actual draft upon an actual bank, and the 
 signer a possessor of real wealth in that bank. To 
 St Paul, of such nature although on a different plane 
 was the Eucharist. 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 353 
 
 We note, therefore, that since the meal was real and 
 the spiritual fellowship an immediate experience, the 
 fact of its being a memorial was altogether a secondary 
 aspect of the sacrament. The meal was not primarily 
 in memory of another meal, nor the fellowship in 
 memory of another fellowship. Indeed, it is hardly con- 
 ceivable that a purely memorial ceremony of any kind 
 could ever partake of the essential character of ritual. 
 
 Those Christians who have abandoned the supernatural- 
 istic interpretation of the Eucharist unfortunately have 
 not had enough insight to hit upon anything but its 
 memorial aspect as a rational justification for their con- 
 tinuance of the rite. The Unitarians, following Zwingli's 
 explanation of the Lord's Supper, have continued the 
 practice of it simply as a commemoration, with a sham 
 meal and without communion among members. Had 
 those who have largely discarded supernaturalism in religion 
 been as gifted with constructive and synthetic genius as 
 they have been with negative and destructive power, they 
 would, after discarding all other interpretations, have 
 fallen back upon that of St Paul. They would have seen 
 that the abiding reality of the eucharistic meal lay in its 
 function as a church dinner, which it had been and must 
 again become a dinner to which only members would 
 be admitted and attendance at which would be understood 
 to be a pledge of renewed loyalty. 
 
 Here we find the eternal essence of the sacrament of 
 the Eucharist : it is the rite of the renewal of loyalty 
 among church members. As baptism in its function is 
 the rite of initiation, and, in the public mind, marks off 
 the Church from the world outside, so the sacrament of 
 the Lord's Supper impresses upon the imagination of the 
 members themselves their own unity of aim. This rite is 
 as indispensable as that of initiation. 
 
 23 
 
354 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Every society must strike off from its roll of member- 
 ship the names of those who, after a certain length of time, 
 have ceased to give any sign in proof of their continued 
 interest. Submission to the initiatory rite only proved 
 that the person was at that moment a member ; hence 
 evidence is needed that he is so still. If his name is to 
 be retained and his vital contact is to be preserved, there 
 must be shown at least an irreducible minimum of 
 evidence that his sympathy is still alive. As the elaborate- 
 ness of the symbol is of no importance, the lifting of a 
 finger once a year might be enough. The slightest sign, 
 if only it be unmistakable, may have untold influence ; 
 such might be the significance of the person making it, that 
 a turn of the head might inspire all the other members of the 
 organisation to heroic self-sacrifice, and might thus lead 
 their cause to victory. " He is still with us," would be the 
 purport of the sign. As a vehicle for conveying such a 
 message, a symbolical act might outweigh in value mightiest 
 deeds of active service and prof oundest counsels of statecraft. 
 Thus potent may be one single point of living ritual. 
 
 Those Biblical critics have revealed profound psycho- 
 logical insight who have declared that St Paul arrived at 
 his special interpretation of the Eucharist as the symbol 
 of social unity among church members, through the exi- 
 gencies of his special mission. Paul was an organiser of 
 societies, and as such he soon learnt how easily a new 
 group of enthusiasts disintegrates under the discourage- 
 ment of the first adversity, if there be not some form 
 or ceremony that, as it were, renews the first pledge and 
 reveals the unity of the members to themselves. During 
 periods of great prosperity and of flattering recognition, 
 a group may possibly be able to dispense with any 
 rite of continuance of loyalty. But when adversity 
 arises, when the members can do nothing but wait at 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 355 
 
 such times societies of every description are liable to 
 collapse altogether. It is through the exigencies of such 
 periods of discouragement and enforced inactivity that an 
 experienced organiser discovers the necessity of resorting 
 to symbolical figurements, which shall bring home to the 
 minds of the members the ends and the life they have in 
 common. Such figurements reinforce the life by making 
 the invisible ends vivid and beautiful. The ritualistic act 
 stimulates the imagination, lifting it above the transitory 
 crisis. It keeps the flame of hope burning, it enkindles 
 the love of comrades, which in turn fires the idealistic 
 enthusiasm of all. In this way periods of idleness and 
 despair are utilised : they are transformed into epochs of 
 worship and inner discipline, during which the characters 
 of the members are being welded together and moulded 
 into shape, against the coming hour of action. 
 
 But a society like the Church, even in periods of 
 greatest immediate activity, can never be wholly engrossed 
 in outward enterprises. As her final aim, although social, 
 is inward and rational, instead of external and material, 
 she must be always relatively in a state of waiting. The 
 triumph of her principles in the hearts of men has never 
 been so near full attainment as to justify quiescence and 
 security. She, therefore, more than political or other 
 organisations, has need of ceremonial acts through which 
 to teach and preach her universal, invisible ideals, and thus 
 to unite her members together. 
 
 If we remember that the Church is primarily an 
 educational institution, we shall again see that she pre- 
 eminently is compelled to resort to ritualistic embodiments 
 of her ideals. All teaching of principles is by signs, more 
 or less arbitrary ; all systematic instruction and inspira- 
 tion are through visualisations invented by the teacher. 
 The new theories of education give their entire sanction 
 
356 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 to symbolical illustration. In proportion as the methods 
 of the teacher become psychological and not simply 
 mechanical, sympathetic towards the pupil and not ruthless 
 and inconsiderate of his individuality, in that proportion 
 they are in accord with the philosophy of ritual. Now, 
 the Church being the national school for adults, its object 
 is to build up in the souls of the people regulative 
 principles, inspiring ideas, social vistas and visions. When 
 the Church does this, she supplies the nation with the 
 spiritual power from which will evolve higher economies 
 and liberties, new health, beauty and fullness of life. 
 
 It is the Church's character as ethical educator which 
 justifies her in giving more attention to ritual than need 
 be given by any other organisation. The Church is the 
 nation, in so far as the nation is the standard-bearer of 
 human ideals ; and as a champion of principles she can 
 only stammer out her message incoherently, unless she 
 resorts to artistic expression. 
 
 When we come to consider what rite will most appro- 
 priately symbolise their unity to the members of a 
 society, we need not reason from abstract principles. 
 Hundreds of organisations have tried hundreds of ex- 
 periments as means of perpetuating and strengthening the 
 sense of comradeship. Among these experiments, one 
 has been so eminently and generally successful as to prove 
 itself a symbol natural to the human mind ; it is none 
 other than that of which we have been speaking a meal 
 in common at frequent intervals. 
 
 It is almost as essential to the life of a social group 
 of friends that its members shall partake regularly of a 
 meal in common, as to the life of each member that he 
 shall regularly sustain his own body by food. It is hard 
 to conceive what the common life of a family would 
 be, if the members never sat down to meals together. 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 357 
 
 We are liable to forget that the home is in great part 
 a natural consequence of the ritualistic institutions 
 called family breakfast, dinner and supper. Here the 
 meal is the symbol of the unity of the group, as the 
 Lord's Supper was to Paul of the unity of the Church. 
 It is interesting to note in this connection that wise 
 innovators, wishing to reform the family, but not to 
 expose it to disintegration, while quite ready to abolish 
 the domestic kitchen, the separate house, and many other 
 customary accessories of ordinary home life, insist that 
 the members of each family must at least continue the 
 practice of meeting to break bread together. Historians 
 of the French Revolution bear testimony to the socially 
 cohesive effect of common meals by tracing its outbreak 
 in great part to the social converse which the life in the 
 cafes of Paris made possible. A great German socialist 
 maintains that one of the conditions without which the 
 perfect organisation of the Social-Democratic Party would 
 have been impossible, has been the restaurant life in the 
 beer-gardens of the Fatherland. Except for this, the work- 
 ing people could never have become sufficiently intimate 
 either to trust or to love one another ; they could not 
 have been reinforced in their economic convictions and 
 hopes, nor could they have learned to express articulately 
 the emotions they felt. This same social-democratic 
 statesman goes so far as to attribute, in very large part, 
 the inability of the working people of England to organise 
 in like manner, to the total absence among the British 
 workmen of anything like German or French oppor- 
 tunities of social converse. The English public-house, 
 their only meeting-place with its lack of opportunity 
 for a meal in common is one proof of the degradation 
 and isolation into which the units of the masses have 
 been driven. 
 
358 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 This question, therefore, of meals in common is one 
 which involves far-reaching and deep-lying issues. It is 
 one which is gaining the attention of reformers, and pre- 
 eminently of women. Possibly it will be found once 
 more that a meal in common is to be the germ out of 
 which shall grow the new order of a more humane society. 
 
 So potent is the mental effect of meals in common in 
 binding persons into reciprocal loyalty and creating the 
 sense that the honour of all is involved in the honour of 
 each, that we often find persons persistently faithful to 
 one another when there is no other bond of attachment 
 between them except the sense of identity which springs 
 out of the practice of sitting about the same table. On 
 the other hand, were there ever friends who did not wish 
 to eat together ? And have persons, for any reason, often 
 eaten voluntarily at one board and not grown involuntarily 
 attached to one another ? This effect is not inexplicable ; 
 and it seems inevitable, when we consider what opportunity 
 the common meal gives for intimacy of acquaintance. It 
 offers almost the only regular opportunity in life for 
 personal interchange of haphazard sentiments. It gives 
 a chance for points of congeniality to betray themselves. 
 Especially at meal-time the individuality of the shyest 
 character will unexpectedly make bold to come out of 
 its hiding-place ; and revelations of individuality as 
 such are always attractive and arouse tenderness and 
 deference. 
 
 It must, therefore, be remembered that when a man 
 partakes of a meal with others, more effects and of another 
 order are produced upon him than the satisfying of his 
 hunger and thirst. Even without his knowing it, his 
 will and emotions are being stimulated in specific direc- 
 tions. His mind as well as his body is being fed ; he 
 is assimilating spiritual substance of a definite kind. It 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 359 
 
 is for this reason that the simple-minded should beware 
 with whom they eat. Every worldly politician, from 
 Machiavelli to Bismarck, would advise the intriguer : 
 " Invite to dinner the man whom you mean to corrupt." 
 The simplicity characteristic of a truly ethical diplomacy 
 would forbid us to say to one who would be a saviour 
 of men, " Invite to dinner the man whom you wish 
 to save " ; but, nevertheless, the ethical statesman may 
 and does say, and always has said, with an insight as 
 harmless as it is wise, "When a man has begun to 
 share with you your love of righteousness, share with 
 him also your bread as often as you can." The common 
 meal among those bound together in devotion to goodness 
 multiplies many times the goodness of each. And the 
 greater the number of those who participate, and the 
 more frequent the repetition of the meal, the greater the 
 psychological effect. 
 
 If the common meal of itself be psychologically 
 potent even where there is no spiritual bond to begin 
 with, how much more powerful does it become when 
 devotion to a common idea has been the principle of 
 selection upon which the participants were chosen ! It is 
 only when enthusiasm for a given idea is the passport of 
 eligibility to a dinner, that the dinner becomes in the full 
 sense a symbol of spiritual fellowship and reacts in the 
 highest degree as a cohesive force. 
 
 The ideal which acts as the magnet need not be a 
 noble one in order to be powerful. Consider the 
 banquets to which the rich invite one another. Their 
 common interest may be only devotion to the god Gold ; 
 but the feast thereby becomes a ritual in acknowledgment 
 of the value of wealth, and is a mighty force cementing 
 class-interest and strengthening class-pride. If the rich, 
 outside of family life, never shared a meal in common, 
 
360 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 it is possible that the clashes of competition and vanity 
 would induce isolation among their units ; it is the social 
 life induced by their dinners and other such ceremonies 
 which fosters class-consciousness. Dinners among the 
 devotees of art or literature in like manner create an 
 aesthetic club ; the club becomes a school, and the school 
 engenders an atmosphere which gives tone to the life of 
 everyone who breathes it. 
 
 The most accurate test of class aloofness among the 
 people of the same nation is difference of table manners 
 and customs. In the interests of national unity these 
 differences must be removed. Some day all social meals 
 will be sacraments of spiritual fellowship. As the demo- 
 cratic spirit penetrates the religious organisations of 
 Christianity, the prevalent feasting of the rich together, 
 the exclusive banquets of those of the same aesthetic tastes, 
 and even merely family repasts, will be branded as symbols 
 of pride or prejudice, and as a desecration of an institution 
 which ought to typify the fellowship of all humanity. 
 The unwillingness of those high in the social scale to eat 
 with those below is the measure of their inhumanity. 
 On the other hand, the uncomfortable sense among the 
 working people of not being at home at the tables of the 
 rich will be used as a gauge of the forces of social 
 disruption. In the meantime, there are humanistic in- 
 fluences at work towards the transformation of all meals 
 into the likeness of the Lord's Supper as it existed in 
 the beginning. 
 
 It is not unreasonable to hope that these tendencies will 
 affect the sacrament of the Eucharist itself, and so operate 
 upon it as to bring it back to its pristine meaning and 
 virility. The proposal seems at first startling, that all 
 the members of each church congregation should have a 
 meal together often enough to bring about personal 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 361 
 
 intimacy and create a sense of social solidarity ; but, 
 although powerful prejudices and strong habits stand in 
 the way of realising it, it is conceivable that active human- 
 istic propaganda during one or two generations might 
 remove these difficulties. 
 
 There are, however, other obstacles to be overcome ; 
 the question of practical arrangements, for one thing, is by 
 no means easy to solve. Where could such church dinners 
 be held ? There are no kitchens and dining-rooms at the 
 disposal of the churches. This problem can scarcely be 
 counted one of immediate urgency in ecclesiastical politics ; 
 but the imagination easily leaps the bounds of our un- 
 interesting times, and I have been unable to refrain from 
 picturing to myself the churches themselves, now so 
 gloomily empty for the major portion of the week, filled 
 at least one evening in every seven by communicants 
 taking their evening meal together. Every member 
 of a church must have a meal somewhere : why not once 
 a week make of it an idealistic communion ? There may 
 be cases where the number of communicants could not be 
 seated in the church's space at a common board. Then, 
 on two evenings in the week or six if need be the 
 church building might be transformed from an empty, 
 sepulchre-like monument into a home of fraternal cheer. 
 The beautiful appropriateness of the church buildings as 
 banqueting-halls would also be in favour of such a use of 
 them. We hear much of the heaven-aspiring Gothic, 
 suggestive in its vague mystery of the infinite above us ; 
 but it only needs an adequate illumination of every line of 
 arch and vault to convert the Gothic into a perfect symbol 
 of human tenderness and hope. 
 
 This suggestion of the church dinner may prove a 
 valuable hint to those whose supreme interest is to lead 
 the Church gently forward from supernaturalism into 
 
362 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 humanism. Two centuries of mere argument and of 
 logical appeal to experience as the final test of truth, have 
 failed to move the churches to an abandonment of their 
 transcendental formularies ; and the sacrament of the 
 Eucharist is still the most complete embodiment of their 
 intellectual error. But it is quite possible that an approach 
 from another direction would achieve what logic has failed 
 to do. An attempt to convert the Lord's Supper into a 
 real meal and into an actual communion might occasion 
 an almost unconscious abandonment of the trust in intelli- 
 gent agencies outside of human society. The Church's 
 supreme sacrament, thus reformed, might prove the 
 magnet by which the Church is to be drawn out of 
 its barren metaphysics and into the sphere of humane 
 science. 
 
 As a warning against the proposal to transform the 
 Lord's Supper into an ordinary meal as regards what is 
 eaten and the amount to be taken, will be cited the fact that 
 the Church herself in the first centuries was compelled 
 to discourage and finally to abandon the Agapae, because 
 they deteriorated into occasions of gluttony and revelry. 
 But it must be remembered that this would never have 
 happened had not the purport of a meal as a symbol 
 of the unity of the Church been reserved exclusively for 
 a purely ceremonial occasion. It was the differentiation 
 between the eucharistic meal and the Love-feast which 
 caused the latter to degenerate. Nor must the rebuke 
 of St Paul to the Corinthian Church be misunderstood 
 as discouraging fellowship and the providing of an 
 ordinary meal. He only insists upon orderliness, and 
 protests against unseemly scrambling and greediness by 
 persons who forgot the dignity of the occasion. The 
 fact, moreover, that in his time the communicants were 
 almost wholly of the humblest classes of the community 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 363 
 
 may have rendered impossible a fellowship which to-day 
 would be in no danger of excess or laxity. 
 
 If the fear be expressed that the provision of an ordinary 
 meal would occasion hypocrisy by alluring those who, 
 although not spiritual members of the Church, would come 
 for the sake of the meal, what a commentary we have here 
 upon the economic inhumanity of our modern life ! 
 And, all things considered, it would seem that the Church 
 would be better fulfilling her professed aim by even thus 
 attracting the poor than by letting them go hungry for 
 fear of risking the presence of a few pretenders. 
 
 My interpretation of the Lord's Supper as a real meal 
 in common, to celebrate the unity among church members, 
 is not original on my part, although, so far as I am aware, 
 no one has before proposed to reform the ritual so that 
 its real nature should be restored and become apparent to 
 everyone. The same explanation of it is expressed fully 
 and with astonishing boldness in Sir John Seeley's Ecce 
 Homo. That the extent of my debt to him may be 
 realised, I quote the following paragraphs from his 
 chapter entitled " The Lord's Supper " : 
 
 That Christ had but a slight esteem for rites and 
 ceremonies may be argued negatively from his establishing 
 so few, and positively from the contempt he poured on the 
 traditional formalities prized so highly by the Scribes and 
 Pharisees. But he well understood their use, and we have 
 already observed with what rigorous firmness he insisted 
 on his followers submitting to the initiatory rite of 
 baptism. The kingdom he was founding was to be every- 
 where imperium in imperio ; its members were to be at the 
 same time members of secular states and national bodies. It 
 was therefore a matter of extreme importance to preserve 
 the distinctness of the Christian Society and to prevent its 
 members from being drawn apart from each other by the 
 distractions of worldly claims and engagements. For this 
 purpose certain sacraments or solemn observances renewing 
 
364 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 and reminding them of their union were most desirable, 
 and Christ ordained two, the one expressing the distinct- 
 ness of the Church from the world, and the other the unity 
 of the Church within itself. Of the former, Baptism, 
 mention was made when we considered Christ's Call j 
 concerning the latter, the Common Supper or (TV&CTLTIOV 
 of Christians, it is convenient to say something now. 
 
 A common meal is the most natural and universal way 
 of expressing, maintaining, and as it were ratifying relations 
 of friendship. The spirit of antiquity regarded the meals 
 of human beings as having the nature of sacred rites (sacra 
 mensee). If, therefore, it sounds degrading to compare the 
 Christian Communion to a club-dinner, this is not owing 
 to any essential difference between the two things, but to 
 the fact that the moderns connect less dignified associa- 
 tions with meals than the ancients did, and that most clubs 
 have a far less serious object than the Christian Society. 
 The Christian Communion is a club-dinner : but the club 
 is the New Jerusalem ; God and Christ are members of it; 
 death makes no vacancy in its lists, but at its banquet- 
 table the perfected spirits of just men, with an innumerable 
 company of angels, sit down beside those who have not yet 
 surrendered their bodies to the grave. 
 
 Although the sacrament of the Eucharist has been so 
 vitiated by the Church's error of supernaturalism as to 
 have lost for the common eye every vestige of likeness to 
 a club-dinner, or any other kind of dinner, so that it 
 required the genius of a Seeley to uncover its real nature, 
 still his interpretation, once presented, becomes incontro- 
 vertible. The Church would be returning, as it has often 
 done along other lines, to primitive custom, were it to 
 convert the Eucharist into a club-dinner. But should 
 the prejudice of public opinion refuse to admit such 
 reform, that would be no reason why the Church should 
 not now, to meet the exigencies of its present mission, 
 establish real church-dinners. Their function in the 
 economy of its work, their ritualistic character and 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 365 
 
 meaning, would operate fully, although not one in 
 a thousand participants detected their identity with the 
 original institution as it existed in the Apostles* time. 
 
 Furthermore, societies which are springing up quite 
 devoid of supernaturalism and yet in devotion to the 
 same ethical ends as those of the Church, if they are 
 directed by far-seeing organisers, will certainly establish 
 besides a rite of initiation another for the deepening of 
 fellowship among members. And this second rite will 
 inevitably consist of a meal in common. A simple repast 
 as a symbol of fellowship in such a society would never 
 for a moment, in the present state of public opinion 
 concerning the nature of the Lord's Supper, be charged 
 with being an imitation of the sacrament of the Eucharist. 
 So absolutely do both the present form and the prevalent 
 interpretation of the Eucharist obscure its psychological 
 functions, that an ethical-fellowship dinner would not 
 suffer the contempt which merely servile imitation of 
 older forms deservedly arouses. Thus, even in Christian 
 countries, men could do again what from the point of 
 view of establishing a ritual for the deepening of fellow- 
 ship would be in exact analogy with early church practice, 
 and yet not stir up prejudices. 
 
 I have said that if new ethical organisations are to 
 spring up, they will inevitably adopt as the ritual of 
 fellowship a meal in common ; but perhaps the assertion 
 is too unqualified. It is not absolutely necessary that the 
 sign chosen should be the one most perfectly embody- 
 ing by analogy the meaning to be conveyed. And it is 
 at least conceivable that in a universal church some other 
 sign might serve to indicate the unity among members 
 better or more conveniently than a meal. A meeting at 
 regular intervals might be established, to which only 
 members would be admitted, and the coming to which 
 
3 66 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 would be understood to signify a renewal of loyalty. It 
 might be required only that every person in such a meet- 
 ing should shake hands with every other. But, indeed, 
 even this formality could be dispensed with, if it were 
 ordered that everyone present should speak personally 
 with everyone else. After all, it is this word-to-word and 
 eye-to-eye meeting of member with member which is 
 essential as a means of developing deference for in- 
 dividuality and the attachment of comradeship. It would 
 seem, indeed, that even if there were a common meal, 
 some such arrangement as the speaking of each with each 
 would need to be established, in order to prevent divisions 
 of those present at the same table into groups which held 
 one another in contempt or envy. 
 
 I began this analysis by stating that in the Communion 
 Service were to be found Christian thought and life not 
 only at their worst but also at their best. Despite its 
 degeneracy as ritual, and despite its being honeycombed 
 with supernaturalism, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper 
 is even to-day the most wisely ethical rite in existence 
 among men. 
 
 For, whatever else it is or is not, it stands unique as 
 the only rite the preliminary invitation to which contains 
 a challenge that no person shall participate who has not 
 repented of his wrong-doing and is not in love and 
 charity with his neighbours. When one considers the 
 long ages in which correctness of intellectual creed has 
 been practically the only test of church membership, one 
 wonders that this invitation should not have been modified 
 so as to exclude not the evil-doer and the hater of his 
 neighbour, but the unorthodox thinker, the heretic. No 
 such degenerate tendency, however, has been incorporated. 
 From the days of the Epistles and the Acts until now the 
 Eucharist has been uncontaminated by the dogmatic 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 367 
 
 bigotry of heresy-hunters. To be sure, the ethical 
 invitation is couched in the language of ordinary theology ; 
 but the emphatic pre-eminence which it gives to purely 
 moral conditions of eligibility to participate is beyond 
 dispute. 
 
 In the Church of England Communion Service, the 
 preliminary invitation and announcement by the priest 
 (a part of which I have in an earlier chapter adapted 
 for the exordium of a proposed initiation service) reads 
 thus : 
 
 Dearly beloved, on ... day next I purpose, through 
 God's assistance, to administer to all such as shall be 
 religiously and devoutly disposed the most comfortable 
 Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ ; to be by 
 them received in remembrance of his meritorious Cross 
 and Passion ; whereby alone we obtain remission of our 
 sins, and are made partakers of the Kingdom of heaven. 
 Wherefore it is our duty to render most humble and 
 hearty thanks to Almighty God our heavenly Father, for 
 that he hath given his Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, not 
 only to die for us, but also to be our spiritual food and 
 sustenance in that holy Sacrament. Which being so 
 divine and comfortable a thing to them who receive it 
 worthily, and so dangerous to them that will presume to 
 receive it unworthily ; my duty is to exhort you in the 
 mean season to consider the dignity of that holy mystery, 
 and the great peril of the unworthy receiving thereof; and 
 so to search and examine your own consciences, (and that 
 not lightly, and after the manner of dissemblers with God ; 
 but so) that ye may come holy and clean to such a heavenly 
 Feast, in the marriage-garment required by God in holy 
 Scripture, and be received as worthy partakers of that holy 
 Table. 
 
 The way and means thereto is ; First, to examine your 
 lives and conversations by the rule of God's commandments ; 
 and whereinsoever ye shall perceive yourselves to have 
 offended, either by will, word, or deed, there to bewail your 
 own sinfulness, and to confess yourselves to Almighty God, 
 with full purpose of amendment of life. And if ye shall 
 
368 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 perceive your offences to be such as are not only against God, 
 but also against your neighbours ; then ye shall reconcile 
 yourselves unto them ; being ready to make restitution and 
 satisfaction, according to the uttermost of your powers, for 
 all injuries and wrongs done by you to any other j and 
 being likewise ready to forgive others that have offended 
 you, as ye would have forgiveness of your offences at 
 God's hand : for otherwise the receiving of the holy Com- 
 munion doth nothing else but increase your damnation. 
 Therefore if any of you be a blasphemer of God, an 
 hinderer or slanderer of his Word, an adulterer, or be in 
 malice, or envy, or in any other grievous crime, repent you 
 of your sins, or else come not to that holy Table j lest, 
 after the taking of that holy Sacrament, the devil enter into 
 you, as he entered into Judas, and fill you full of all 
 iniquities, and bring you to destruction both of body and 
 soul. 
 
 And because it is requisite, that no man should come to 
 the holy Communion, but with a full trust in God's mercy, 
 and with a quiet conscience ; therefore if there be any of 
 you, who by this means cannot quiet his own conscience 
 herein, but requireth further comfort or counsel, let him 
 come to me, or to some other discreet and learned 
 Minister of God's Word, and open his grief ; that by the 
 ministry of God's holy Word he may receive the benefit of 
 absolution, together with ghostly counsel and advice, to the 
 quieting of his conscience, and avoiding of all scruple and 
 doubtfulness. 
 
 The same condition of eligibility to participate is again 
 emphasised in the invitation at the time of the celebration 
 of the Communion. One passage in this invitation is pain- 
 fully and unnecessarily gruesome that where it is said that 
 in the sacrament we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ and 
 drink his blood. Another passage is so na'fve as to lower 
 the dignity of even the most solemn sacrament : the 
 intending participants are threatened that, if they do not 
 come to the communion-table with a pure heart, they may 
 provoke God to plague them with divers diseases and 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 369 
 
 sundry kinds of death. The first half of this invitation 
 reads as follows : 
 
 Dearly beloved in the Lord, ye that mind to come 
 to the holy Communion of the Body and Blood of our 
 Saviour Christ, must consider how Saint Paul exhorteth all 
 persons diligently to try and examine themselves, before 
 they presume to eat of that Bread, and drink of that Cup. 
 For as the benefit is great, if with a true penitent heart 
 and lively faith we receive that holy Sacrament ; (for then 
 we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ, and drink his blood ; 
 then we dwell in Christ, and Christ in us ; we are one 
 with Christ, and Christ with us ;) so is the danger great, 
 if we receive the same unworthily. For then we are 
 guilty of the Body and Blood of Christ our Saviour ; we 
 eat and drink our own damnation, not considering the 
 Lord's Body ; we kindle God's wrath against us ; we 
 provoke him to plague us with divers diseases, and sundry 
 kinds of death. Judge therefore yourselves, brethren, that 
 ye be not judged of the Lord ; repent you truly for your 
 sins past ; have a lively and stedfast faith in Christ our 
 Saviour ; amend your lives, and be in perfect charity with 
 all men ; so shall ye be meet partakers of those holy 
 mysteries. 
 
 Then later are said, to those who intend to receive the 
 Holy Communion, these words : 
 
 Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, 
 and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and 
 intend to lead a new life, following the commandments 
 of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways ; 
 Draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your 
 comfort ; and make your humble confession to Almighty 
 God, meekly kneeling upon your knees. 
 
 This condition to which the participants are enjoined 
 to submit is the primary secret of the moral power at the 
 heart of the Anglican Eucharist. To think that only 
 those in a congregation who had made their peace with 
 
 conscience and with their neighbours should be invited to 
 
 24 
 
370 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 join in any sort of a ceremony whatsoever ! No matter 
 what the bodily acts and words of the ceremony itself, its 
 power would be drawn from the preliminary condition. 
 What a challenge to examine one's own heart aright ! 
 What a call to make amends for all wrongs done to 
 anyone ! What were better fitted to concentrate the 
 whole thought and character of every person present upon 
 the necessity of brotherly love and of making restitution 
 for past injustice ? It is true that utterly depraved 
 natures, persons given over to lying and hypocrisy, might 
 not be stopped, even by the announcement of this 
 condition, from participating unworthily. But happily 
 such extreme depravity is rare, and upon all except such 
 natures the summons to the communion table could have 
 none but the effect which it was meant to have. 
 
 We must not forget that the invitation exercises an 
 influence salutary and redemptive upon those who for 
 conscience' sake abstain from participating, as well as upon 
 those who are not excluded by intellectual disagreements. 
 Again, it is quite possible, as the challenge is one wholly 
 to self-judgment, that the man who decides that he is 
 morally unworthy is by that self-condemnation more 
 benefited in character than many who discover in them- 
 selves no obstacle. 
 
 One cannot read the passages which I have quoted 
 without seeing how easy it would be to discard from them 
 every spiritistic implication, and even, if necessary, every 
 reference to the particular events in the life of Christ, 
 thus removing the transient elements and the local 
 colouring, and thus to universalise the invitation so that it 
 would be as acceptable to persons of Jewish or Japanese 
 as of Christian antecedents. The principle that a man 
 should repent of his wrong-doings and be reconciled to 
 his neighbours by making restitution for wrong done, is 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 371 
 
 by no means peculiar to the Christian tradition ; and it is 
 regrettable that there should not now be some sort of 
 a ceremony thus premised, which should contain no 
 adventitious stumbling-blocks to any good man of any 
 nation. 
 
 But even as it is, on account of this preliminary exhorta- 
 tion, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper must be ranked 
 in ethical influence with the institution of the Jewish 
 Sabbath or the Christian Sunday. Although operating 
 upon a much narrower circle and producing a different 
 order of effects, it has indirectly been of equal benefit. 
 More than any other cause, it has given depth, intensity, 
 concentration and insight to the Church, so far as the 
 Church has possessed these qualities. No invention of 
 human statesmanship is more wonderful in ingenuity, in 
 simplicity, in ease of operation, and in abundance and far- 
 reachingness of beneficent issues. 
 
 There is, however, in the rite of the Anglican Eucharist 
 another feature of supreme ethical utility besides the 
 preliminary invitation. It is one which has no mystery 
 about it, and which has never been interpreted as due 
 in any way to the operation of a supernatural agency. 
 I refer to the public commitment on the side of moral 
 goodness which every participant makes in rising and 
 coming forward to partake of the bread and wine. This 
 public act of commitment need not assume the formal 
 aspect of drawing near to the chancel, as in the Church 
 of England. In Nonconformist bodies it is customary 
 for those who do not intend to take part in the sacrament 
 to leave the church, and for those who remain to come 
 together in the front seats. Even the mere being seen 
 to remain to the communion service is itself a public 
 commitment. Were the communion rite to consist of the 
 coming forward to the front of the church, were there 
 
372 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 to be no ceremony involving bread and wine, or any 
 memorial or any fulfilment of any request of the Founder 
 of Christianity, the act symbolising unity among church 
 members would still be awful in its sublimity ; for there 
 is nothing so impressive as a public commitment to 
 fellowship in the principles of the moral life. 
 
 It is often maintained by enemies of the Christian 
 Church that ethical interests and ends hold a very sub- 
 ordinate place in its doctrine, and that its scheme of 
 salvation is not one of moral redemption, but, as it were, 
 of ceremonial cleansing and propitiatory appeasement of 
 non-ethical agencies. And indeed there are not lacking 
 champions of the Church who delight in pointing out that 
 it is something altogether different from a mere ethical 
 society. Be this as it may, the fact is incontrovertible that 
 no organisation except the Church has established any 
 institution approaching even remotely the sacrament of 
 the Eucharist in ethical purpose and in the shrewd 
 naturalism of its means for achieving an ethical end. 
 There have recently sprung into existence organisations 
 distinctively naming themselves ethical societies ; yet there 
 is not one of these which holds a meeting to which only 
 those are invited who feel themselves at peace with their 
 conscience and their neighbours. Many of these societies 
 declare that the good life is of supreme worth to humanity ; 
 yet they seem scarcely to have had the courage of their 
 convictions, or else they have lacked the constructive 
 genius to find out the simplest and most natural means 
 of building up a fellowship in devotion to the moral life. 
 One might presuppose that organisations consciously 
 discarding all communion with supernatural agencies 
 would have turned with the ingenuity of enthusiasm 
 to find equivalents, or more than equivalents, for the 
 Church's means of ethical culture. But it would seem 
 
THE COMMUNION SERVICE 373 
 
 that persons who break away from old forms, exhaust 
 much of their spiritual constructiveness in so doing, and 
 are consequently feeble in the invention of new means. It 
 would seem that constructive work in religious fellowship 
 is never undertaken except when ethical passion has 
 reached the blazing-point of apostolic fervour. But until 
 ethical societies, distinctively so called, do devise as good 
 means of spiritual culture as the Church has done, it will 
 be well for them to remember, with Sir John Seeley, that 
 the Church itself was the first ethical society. It was, no 
 doubt, committed to the intellectual error of tracing moral 
 redemption to superhuman agencies ; hence the good in 
 it has been in so far vitiated for the modern scientific 
 spirit ; but, luckily, in the formularies of the supreme 
 sacrament there is no requirement of assent to an 
 intellectual creed, nor is the doctrine of transubstantiation 
 or consubstantiation, or any other metaphysical theory, 
 actually embodied in them. Everything that is said, if it 
 may be interpreted according to the canons of literary and 
 historical criticism, is either a plain statement or a poetic 
 embodiment of ethical experience. 
 
 It is possible that the organisers of the Church's ritual 
 were prepared to present so purely ethical a sacrament 
 only because they had entrenched their intellectual 
 dogmas in the baptismal and confirmatory rites, and in 
 the Catechism ; but the fact that they did so is none the 
 less a happy augury. 
 
 Those who believe, as I do, in the ethical efficacy of 
 the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, cannot but deplore 
 the fact that, before one can participate in it, one must 
 submit to the present formularies of the ordinance of 
 baptism. That ordinance is supposed to commit one to 
 belief in the conventional interpretation of the Apostles' 
 Creed, and to bind one intellectually and morally to belief 
 
374 
 
 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 and trust in superhuman sources of redemption. Anyone, 
 therefore, who counts such belief and trust as lamentable 
 errors, is for conscience* sake self-excluded from the 
 communion table. Yet that he should be forced into 
 this predicament is a spiritual injustice ; and the arrogance 
 of the supernaturalists in claiming a monopoly in church 
 membership will some day be actively resented by the 
 best men and women in the nation. Nor will these be 
 content simply to found new ethical organisations, dis- 
 connected from those of the past ; they will storm the 
 historical Church, until they beat down its barriers of 
 supernaturalism ; and the Church itself will then be 
 glad to make room for them at its fellowship supper. 
 
 For no sect elect 
 Is the soul's wine poured 
 And her table decked : 
 Whom should man reject 
 From man's common board ? 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 
 
 THE Church still regards herself as a restraining influence 
 upon the wayward and excessive impulses of human 
 nature. And there is no doubt that in the past she has 
 for the most part been a power on the side not only of 
 conventional law and order, but of those customs which 
 are of real service to human society. 
 
 In former generations, in order to throw her weight 
 into the scale in favour of health and innocent happiness, 
 she needed only to uphold her own doctrines, forms and 
 ceremonies. But the time has now come when those very 
 doctrines are in many points antiquated, and, instead of 
 furthering, are a hindrance to the cause of social purity 
 and innocence. Her form for the solemnisation of 
 marriage, like her Burial Service, bears every mark of an 
 age more external and mechanical, less spiritual and 
 sympathetic, than ours. 
 
 The marriage ceremony is itself to a considerable 
 extent accountable for the confusion of thought which 
 prevails to-day as to the meaning and importance of the 
 institution of matrimony. Whoever, therefore, among 
 the upholders of the Church is filled with her deeper 
 spirit and insight and adheres to her ultimate end of 
 social purity and justice, must in the very name of the 
 
 Church discard her present marriage form. 
 
 375 
 
376 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Yet to-day, more than ever before, there is a jealous 
 insistence upon the inviolability of the Prayer Book 
 both its teaching and its letter ; and if any revision is 
 immediately undertaken, there is danger that it may be 
 only in the direction of fortifying and intensifying those 
 very characteristics that are out of harmony with the new 
 spirit and the deeper needs of modern life. If tendencies 
 develop as they have begun of late, the clergy of the 
 Church, for the sake of the Prayer Book, will be found 
 defending comparative brutality and laxity in private 
 morals, while the boldest and most self-reliant thinkers 
 of the day, the independent humanitarian reformers who 
 have broken away from the Church, will become the 
 acknowledged pioneers of a more rigid marriage order, 
 of severer laws against waywardness and self-indulgence, 
 and the upholders of a higher standard of personal virtue. 
 
 It is a most significant fact that within the last few 
 years bold and independent criticism of social and religious 
 institutions has made a new departure a right-about-face 
 as regards its task and policy. Until recently its work 
 had been negative, fault-finding, destructive if not pick- 
 ing new holes, pointing to those that were there all the time 
 but had been overlooked. Work of this sort has been 
 so far accomplished there is now such a strong and alert 
 public opinion against errors and barriers which impede 
 health, science and opportunity for a fuller life that 
 the hitherto destructive critics have felt justified and 
 emboldened to start the work of building anew the 
 institutions which shall replace the old and perform their 
 service better. 
 
 This transformation from a destructive to a con- 
 structive policy is especially marked in regard to the 
 change of attitude of critics towards the institution of 
 marriage. For many years the effect of pointing out 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 377 
 
 the anomalies and inhumanities which are harboured and 
 sanctioned by the traditional views of the Church and by 
 the laws of the country was to cast the whole institution 
 of monogamy into discredit. During the last generation 
 the sentiment spread throughout widening circles of 
 society that marriage was a thing not to be reformed but 
 to be swept away ; that it was a mere conventionality, 
 upheld in the interests not of virtue but of hypocrisy, 
 and that a conspiracy of silence hushed up the crying 
 wrongs which were perpetrated within the institution and 
 under the sanction of religion. But now the defiant 
 critics of marriage as it is, are also the most powerful and 
 outspoken champions of monogamy ; they would make 
 it more rigid. They totally reject the notion that the 
 relation of man and woman is a merely private affair ; 
 they maintain that it above all others is the relationship 
 in life in which the community as an organised whole 
 the State may interfere. A hundred practices which 
 have been approved, condoned and tolerated, they declare, 
 must now be suppressed as illegal by means of punishments 
 attached, and many evils still rife must be anticipated 
 and prevented by systematic and timely instruction. 
 They declare further that many aspects of a man's life 
 which he has been allowed to account private must hence- 
 forth be recorded, through the medical profession, lawyers 
 and others, under State authorities, and that access to 
 these records must be given to such persons as they may 
 vitally concern. These agitators declare that in order to 
 prevent the mental and physical degeneration of the 
 people, the hidden things of darkness must be brought 
 to light. The facts are accessible ; those who can record 
 them are already in possession of them and can be con- 
 strained to communicate them to the central authorities. 
 This question, therefore, of the reform by the State 
 
378 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Church of its marriage ceremony is only part of the 
 larger issue of reforming marriage itself, so that as an 
 institution it shall fulfil the ends for which every civilised 
 nation has established it. 
 
 But while the reform of the marriage ceremony is but 
 a part of a vaster change, it is by no means insignificant. 
 
 Many persons do not yet realise that if there be no 
 marriage ceremony, there can be no marriage. They 
 accordingly speak slightingly, if not sneeringly and bitterly, 
 against any formal rite of initiation into matrimony, as 
 if somehow such a rite, instead of serving, was adverse 
 to the institution itself. But here, alas ! we have one 
 more proof that the misuse of a thing not only casts 
 discredit upon the use, but blinds people to its true 
 purpose. The defects of the present ceremony are so 
 glaring, not to say insulting to our better nature, and so 
 adverse to the conscious needs of our day, that many 
 have jumped to the conclusion that it were better to have 
 no ceremony at all. They do not see that where there 
 is no ceremony there is no marriage. 
 
 The truth of this dictum will become the more mani- 
 fest if, instead of the word " ceremony," I should use the 
 word " sign " or " symbol." If there is no act or word 
 chosen by the community to be the sign or symbol that 
 a man and woman are married, then, it must be quite 
 evident, there is in that community no marriage. Persons 
 who fail to see the indispensability of a voluntarily chosen 
 sign or symbol as the mark or note of marriage must have 
 failed to grasp altogether what the essence of marriage 
 is. It is argued that the mere living together in 
 intimate union of a man and woman, especially if they 
 live for years together, constitutes marriage ; but if this 
 is so in any community, it is only because that community 
 has an understanding that the living together of a man 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 379 
 
 and woman for a certain length of time shall be the 
 sign or symbol of matrimony, and then the whole com- 
 munity will look upon that couple as married and will 
 treat them accordingly. A community in which there 
 was no recognition of any sign would be in the position 
 of aggregations of the lower animals. There may be fixed 
 habits prevailing in the relation of the sexes in many 
 species of lower animals ; but we have no reason to 
 believe that there is any social polity in authority over 
 the individual members enforced by public opinion, and 
 so we cannot with exactitude speak of marriage among 
 them. The essence of marriage is the social sanction 
 which the community gives to the living together of man 
 and woman. Where there is no social sanction there is 
 no marriage ; where there is no sign there is no social 
 sanction. Any sign, the most meagre, is a ceremony in 
 rudiment. Suppose that, by common agreement, the mere 
 fact that a man and woman are known to have lived 
 together for a certain length of time constitutes marriage ; 
 then the man who does not wish to be bound by social 
 sanction to any such relationship will instantly take the 
 greatest pains that nobody shall know of such a union. 
 He will avoid the making of the public sign, in order to 
 escape the responsibilities which must follow from social 
 recognition of the union. 
 
 The social sanction cannot fail to impose obligations, 
 for there are no tribes above the lowest who do not lay 
 down some limitations as to what they approve in the 
 relation of the sexes, some customs they condemn and 
 others they permit. 
 
 The choosing of a symbol gives to the act which is used 
 as a sign a new significance and fresh consequences. That 
 act, over and above its own specific nature, now assumes 
 the potencies of ritual. It is accordingly preposterous to 
 
380 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 believe in marriage and yet speak slightingly of a formal 
 entrance into it. In condemning any one ceremony, 
 therefore, the greatest care should be taken not to con- 
 demn marriage ceremonies altogether. Any one sign 
 should be condemned by the champions of marriage 
 only that a more adequate and effective symbol may 
 replace it. A symbol may do untold mischief if it per- 
 verts or obscures the character of the relationship to be 
 sanctioned ; a defective ceremony, therefore, not only 
 does mischief itself, but it blocks the way so long as it 
 exists, preventing the introduction of a symbol which 
 might reinforce and establish the institution in the reason, 
 conscience and heart of all members of the community. 
 The Church's marriage ceremony is the nation's supreme 
 opportunity of instructing and inspiring people, at the 
 most impressionable moment in their whole lives, as to a 
 high ideal of the relation of the sexes and the social signi- 
 ficance of the love of man and woman. Not only Church- 
 men but all citizens have, therefore, a natural interest, in 
 addition to their legal right, in insisting upon the trans- 
 formation of this Church rite into an instrument for the 
 moral elevation of the people. 
 
 If it be said that, because a civil form is at their option, 
 no one is constrained to submit to the marriage rite of 
 the Church, it must be answered that the civil form in 
 another way, if not so offensively, is imperfect. It con- 
 tains no false or perverse sentiments or implications, but 
 only because it is not inspired by sentiment at all ; and 
 this is a deficiency wholly out of harmony with the spirit 
 and intention of marriage. In retort, it might be urged 
 that persons who are so anxious to have a new and 
 adequate ceremony, instead of tampering with the present 
 Church ritual, should labour to transfuse the civil rite 
 with the new sentiments and make it an embodiment of 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 381 
 
 the ideas to be inculcated. But the reply must be that, 
 since both the civil rite and the Church rite are authorita- 
 tive instruments of the nation's sovereign will, each must 
 be brought into harmony with the ideal which the nation 
 is interested to set before the people. So the Church 
 cannot escape the revision of its forms ; and, when its 
 marriage ceremony is what it should be, possibly there 
 will be no occasion for a separate civil rite. 
 
 Let us turn, then, to the Church's form of solemnisa- 
 tion of matrimony, and see how far it meets the require- 
 ments of the purpose it was devised to serve. We notice 
 at the end of the ceremony quotations from St Peter and 
 St Paul, which, in case there be no sermon declaring the 
 duties of man and wife, the minister must read. The 
 first quotation from St Paul begins thus : " Husbands, 
 love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, 
 and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse 
 it with the washing of water, by the Word ; that he 
 might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having 
 spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing ; but that it should 
 be holy, and without blemish. So ought men to love 
 their wives as their own bodies." 
 
 These words were presumably meant by St Paul to be 
 high and holy ; but never was couched in seemly phrase 
 a more insulting assignment of woman to a place of moral 
 and spiritual inferiority to man. As if the man dare for 
 an instant assume, from the point of view of the inner 
 authority of conscience, the office which Christ is pre- 
 sented as holding towards the Church its inspirer, the 
 originator and quickener of its inner life ! It may not 
 be invidious in and of itself to compare woman with the 
 Church ; but to trace to the husband the spiritual life 
 which animates the wife is so grotesque that it is difficult 
 to feel the resentment it deserves. Whatever their 
 
382 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 superiority of bodily strength and of mental calibre, men 
 know perfectly well that the higher life of self-sacrific- 
 ing devotion to others, purity of imagination, moral 
 originality and quickening power, if it come predomin- 
 antly from either side, emanates on the whole rather 
 from the woman than the man. What, then, is this 
 talk and implication that as Christ quickens the Church 
 with the washing of water in order that he might present 
 to himself a glorious Church, holy and without blemish, 
 so the husband ought to love his wife ? And why should 
 the woman be put in this analogy as an object to be 
 loved by the man as he loves his own body ? The in- 
 sinuation from beginning to end here is that the life of 
 the spirit is the man's, and becomes the woman's only as 
 he communicates it. In the time of St Paul, so brutal 
 and sensual may have been his age that it perhaps was an 
 excusable blindness on his part to have penetrated no 
 further into the spiritual personality of woman than 
 was the custom of his day. But for women to-day 
 without a protest to allow this indignity to continue 
 when it is an open secret that the private lives of most 
 men cannot compare for self-control and stainlessness with 
 those of most women is to obscure the moral triumph 
 which womanhood has achieved. So far as their influence 
 upon public opinion and legislation can bring it about, 
 this old-fashioned masculine egoism should no longer be 
 permitted to parade itself ; for it will not be denied that 
 the best men of our day have totally outgrown the pre- 
 tension of any innate spiritual superiority to women. Yet 
 it will be the very men who are still on the plane of brutal 
 self-assertion who will gladly hear it from the lips of the 
 priest that they are to women as the spirit is to the body. 
 Another passage from St Paul which the priest, in lieu 
 of a sermon, is enjoined to read, runs thus : cc Wives, 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 383 
 
 submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the 
 Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as 
 Christ is the head of the Church : and he is the Saviour 
 of the body. Therefore as the Church is subject unto 
 Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every 
 thing." These words, in their brutal insolence, must 
 have worked nothing less than infinite mischief ; they have 
 gratified the vanity and love of authority in men and 
 tended to crush out women's inward dignity and selfhood. 
 
 The one thing which no really good wife ever will do, 
 is to submit herself unto her husband as unto the Lord. 
 The only Lord to which she shall submit is in her own 
 spirit. She will yield to the husband only under Con- 
 science and that her own. She will yield to him only 
 as to an equal, as he himself shall yield in turn. It is a 
 shame that, long after the custom of capturing the wife 
 with a blow that rendered her senseless had become 
 obsolete, the husband, with the priest's aid, should 
 attempt to strike at her soul, and then look upon her 
 as his body. No good woman should ever judge her 
 husband to be her head as Christ is the head of the Church. 
 When we remember that men at the best are no better 
 than women, it sounds like blasphemy against woman 
 if not against Christ that she should be told that the 
 husband is to her as Christ to the Church, and that the 
 husband is the saviour of the body. Probably the 
 general sentiment is correct in feeling that if one more 
 than the other be the saviour of the body it is the 
 woman, since men by the laxity of public opinion often 
 go unpunished even when known to be the opposite of 
 saviours. But enough of St Paul. 
 
 Luckily, as an alternative to these passages, the 
 clergyman may introduce into the marriage ceremony a 
 sermon of his own ; but unfortunately most officials of 
 
384 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 the Church are not sufficiently original or brave to rise 
 above the level of the sentiments and standards set them 
 as models in the formularies of the Church. It would 
 be scarcely fair to expect the ordinary priest, despite the 
 refinement of public opinion, to think further than the 
 Apostles so long as they are set forth as guides. What 
 the ordinary preacher would do would be to say what 
 St Paul does, but in so vague and verbose a manner as 
 to obscure the barbarity of the Pauline teaching. This 
 would be an undoubted gain. Yet it were a pity that 
 words without any definite meaning should be uttered 
 upon an occasion when the parties concerned would be 
 intensely impressionable to idealistic and generous 
 sentiments. 
 
 A model, accordingly, indicating the lines which the 
 preacher should elaborate in the marriage sermon, ought 
 to be embodied in the ceremony. I would therefore 
 tentatively, and as a suggestion rather than a model, 
 offer the following homily, which would remind the 
 bride and bridegroom of the dignity, responsibility and 
 moral conditions of a happy marriage : 
 
 What greater good is there for two human souls than to 
 feel that they are joined for life, to strengthen each other 
 in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister 
 to each other in all pain, and to be one with each other in 
 silent, unspeakable memories at the moment of the last 
 parting ? 
 
 This is a great good. But what more solemn responsi- 
 bility can a man assume than to take into his keeping for 
 life to make or to mar the happiness of the woman he 
 loves ? What more precious trust can a woman accept 
 than that her smile and her sympathy shall be henceforth 
 the crowning glory in the life of him she loves, and the 
 full compensation for all his toil and for every defeat in the 
 battle of life ? 
 
 The cynics of our day fondly declare that those who 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 385 
 
 enter marriage stake their happiness upon chances beyond 
 all calculation. But it does not so appear to one who 
 enters it with eyes fixed upon his or her own part in the 
 fulfilment of the pledge. Such an one is aware that 
 
 Faithfulness can feed on suffering, 
 And knows no disappointment. 
 
 When sorely tried, it grows more beautiful, patient, 
 prudent and serene ; and through these virtues not seldom 
 creates again, in the heart that has wandered or grown cold, 
 a love like unto itself. 
 
 Except in the rarest cases, those persons whose entrance 
 into marriage is a lottery are the culprits, and the institution 
 itself is not at fault. For the ordinary causes of un- 
 expected discord in wedlock may be met and removed. 
 There is no incalculable mystery in the relationship. Its 
 problems may be solved by those who will, for only a better 
 understanding is required, and that mutual adaptation which 
 is love's method of living. Has anyone known love with 
 its peace to die out where such constant thought had been 
 bestowed upon it as so precious a possession deserves ? 
 
 True love is eternal ; but only as was that vestal fire 
 which, sacred to the god of home, used to burn in the 
 inmost shrine of every Roman and Grecian dwelling-house, 
 and in the prytaneum of every city. The fire was eternal, 
 but on condition that it was faithfully watched and fed by 
 the vestal guardians. The husband and wife are them- 
 selves the guardians of the holy flame of love. It will not 
 last if they neglect it ; but, if they tend it, will burn with 
 ever kindlier light. And no one may plead lack of 
 opportunity as an excuse. 
 
 The wise, who have read the human heart with clearest 
 insight, tell us that there are two characteristics of love, but 
 that these are not equal in worth. One they call heavenly 
 and divine, because it rejoices in sacrifice and never seeks 
 itself ; while the other they speak of as belonging to the 
 earth and to the senses, because it is akin to pleasure and it 
 sometimes misleads. The two elements are separable and 
 may exist apart. That which is called earthly is delight 
 in the presence of the beloved one ; that which is named 
 heavenly is delight in the welfare of the beloved one. 
 
3 86 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Together they are both good and best ; but the lower, 
 without the other, is a curse j while the higher, even alone, 
 is a blessing, and is worth any sacrifice which it may cost. 
 To care for the welfare of the beloved is to feed the sacred 
 flame. 
 
 Marriage, as a human institution, looks for its justifica- 
 tion and support to love's higher element, which is steadfast 
 and abiding. It does not depend upon fascination ; it is 
 not alarmed at the waning of delight in outward grace ; 
 for it creates, in the place of that, a delight of the spirit in 
 the spirit of the beloved, whether near or far. 
 
 Those who thus understand marriage are accordingly 
 aware that its vow, although in truth a sacrament, 
 possesses no magic power which can secure and maintain 
 happiness in wedlock. They know that hearts must be 
 dedicated ever anew. Wedded love is like the manna 
 which is said to have fallen from heaven as food for the 
 Children of Israel on their journey through the wilderness. 
 They found that each day they must gather it afresh for 
 that day's use, since no one could live upon the manna of 
 yesterday's gathering. Thus it is with love. 
 
 Less perverse than the words of St Paul, but not 
 quite innocuous, is the prayer which the priest must say 
 in the marriage ceremony, beginning " O God, who by 
 thy mighty power hast made all things of nothing ; who 
 also (after other things set in order) didst appoint, that 
 out of man (created after thine own image and similitude) 
 woman should take her beginning ; . . ." Knowing as 
 we do that no such thing ever happened, and resenting 
 the implied superiority of man as nearer to the Creator 
 and the slight upon woman as dependent upon man for her 
 very being, we cannot allow this passage to remain. The 
 Marriage Service ought to be so true and earnest that no 
 morally ugly fairy-tales could find any place in it. This one 
 has not even the charm of quaintness, so vividly does it 
 remind us of the tragic history of woman in the economy 
 of social life, and so anxious is our solicitude that at last 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 387 
 
 every falsehood by which man has made plausible an unjust 
 advantage over the physical weakness of woman shall be 
 dropped, and in its place the truth, with healing compensa- 
 tion, shall be substituted. 
 
 Immediately preceding the prayer from which I have 
 quoted is another which, the rubric says, is to be omitted 
 when the woman is past child-bearing. Now this prayer 
 introduces an incongruous element of levity into the 
 marriage ceremony of the Church of England. What 
 educated man to-day believes that prayer to a super- 
 natural agent could have any effect upon the fruitfulness 
 of marriage ? It is therefore worse than idle it is 
 offensive to taste and mars the solemnity of the occasion 
 that the priest should be made to cry out, " O merciful 
 Lord, and heavenly Father, by whose gracious gift 
 mankind is increased ; We beseech thee, assist with thy 
 blessing these two persons, that they may both be fruitful 
 in procreation of children." 
 
 One feels almost that one ought to apologise for 
 writing upon this so-called " solemnisation " of matrimony. 
 But I must remind my readers that it is not I but the 
 Prayer Book that is at fault. Had I the power, I should 
 not allow the marriage rite to continue to be a travesty 
 of all that we count finest in the relation of man and 
 woman, and truest in the order of nature and the develop- 
 ment of the human race. From each of the details of 
 the present formulary one is glad to hasten the moment 
 one has but indicated the idea underlying it. 
 
 Turn, for instance, to this question which the minister 
 shall ask : " Who giveth this woman to be married to 
 this man ? " Here again we are confronted by the 
 ghost of the old custom that a woman was owned by her 
 father or other near male relative, and at marriage was 
 handed over to her new owner. In our day, with our 
 
3 88 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 women storming the outposts of the House of Commons 
 in insistence upon their right of suffrage, is it possible 
 that, when this question is put by the minister, no 
 woman will speak out : " I myself, under God, give 
 myself to be married to this man " ? A protest from 
 every woman in the land who so thinks would soon cause 
 the "giving away" of the bride to be omitted from 
 the Church's ceremony. The only alternative to such a 
 course is to insist that this interrogation be preceded by 
 another : " Who giveth this man to be married to this 
 woman ? " Sociologically it is true both of the man and 
 woman that neither is self-owned, and that there is, 
 despite the fullest independence, also a dependence, 
 first of each upon parents and family, as representing 
 the community at large, and after marriage upon each 
 other. The most advanced countries now make it a 
 condition that no man shall be allowed to marry under 
 the age of twenty- four without the consent of his parents. 
 This being so, would it not be in perfect harmony with 
 this law, that the person who has given the needed 
 consent should give the man to be married to the woman ? 
 Indeed, nothing could better educate the public to the 
 meaning of the law than such a form. Nor is there a lack 
 of ground for believing that many restraints which hitherto 
 have been imposed only upon the woman, instead of being 
 removed from her, should now be placed equally upon 
 the man as an agent responsible to the community. 
 
 There has been much controversy as to the differences 
 between the set of questions put to the man and to the 
 woman to bind them to loyalty in the marriage bond. 
 The woman promises to obey ; the husband is not 
 required to give any such pledge. Now, many have 
 felt the injustice of exacting the vow from the woman 
 and not the man, but no one has thought of any other 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 389 
 
 way out of the difficulty than by dropping the word 
 " obey." This would be a vast improvement upon the 
 present partiality ; but, if I do not mistake the trend of 
 the times and the secret of a happy marriage, the word 
 should not only be retained as a part of the woman's 
 vow but also added to the man's. Is it not a fact in the 
 experience of all married persons, where the union has 
 at all approximated to the ideal, that the wise, self- 
 respecting husband, along certain lines of action, is as 
 ready to render implicit obedience to the wife's word as 
 is the wife to his ? Not even genius is so many-sided 
 and balanced that it may not need the common sense, 
 the tender foresight, the strong will uttered by another, 
 and may not be glad in crises to give unquestioning 
 obedience. A great element in the beauty of a happy 
 married life is this partnership in understanding, now the 
 one and now the other controlling, and each grateful 
 to the other for the other's supplementary weight and 
 strength. 
 
 The extortion of a vow of obedience from the woman 
 alone and the implication that she only is given away by 
 another, are but survivals of a type of ceremony prevalent 
 among many savages and ancient peoples. In Croatia it 
 is a part of the marriage rite for the bridegroom to box 
 the ears of the bride, as a sign that he now is her master. 
 In ancient Russia it was the custom for the father to 
 take a whip and, after striking his daughter gently with 
 it, to tell her that he had done so for the last time, and 
 then to present the whip to the bridegroom. Even as 
 mere ceremony these forms are not pleasant. But at 
 least the agelong injustice that has been done to woman 
 would be removed if the woman were now allowed to 
 return the formal compliment. 
 
 We also note a difference implied in the relative 
 
390 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 attitude of husband and wife by the requirement that the 
 bridegroom should place a ring upon the bride's finger, but 
 she none upon his. During this act of the ceremony he 
 is required to say, " With this ring I thee wed, with my 
 body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I 
 thee endow : In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, 
 and of the Holy Ghost." 
 
 No corresponding utterance is exacted of the bride. As 
 to the formula itself, the statement " With all my worldly 
 goods I thee endow " never has been true. But since 
 recent changes in law and custom it has receded further 
 than of old from the facts of the economic relationship of 
 husband and wife. As a historic fact, the wife, if she 
 had any worldly goods, was the one who endowed the 
 husband with them all. Yet this grim aspect of the 
 tragedy of woman is not unveiled in the present rite. 
 
 But the most glaring fault in this statement to be 
 made by the bridegroom, as in the set of words to be 
 repeated by both the bride and bridegroom, is one of 
 omission. Nowhere is there any recognition in these 
 pledges, or in any other part of the marriage ceremony, 
 that the husband and wife have any duties or responsi- 
 bilities, so far as the institution of marriage is concerned 
 beyond their duties to each other and, under the con- 
 tingency of offspring, to their children. Now, it is this 
 self-centredness of marriage, this intense focussing of 
 duty and inclination within the family and the home, 
 which has made of marriage as it exists to-day an institu- 
 tion in very great part hostile to the best interests of 
 national life. The responsibilities of love and tenderness, 
 so it is implied, find their full sphere of activity within 
 the narrow walls of the home. The result is that in most 
 families, in proportion as the husband and wife concen- 
 trate their thought and work upon the home, they dis- 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 391 
 
 regard the well-being of the State at large. Family virtue 
 is by no means civic virtue ; and in our day the most 
 public-spirited men and women find perhaps as much 
 hindrance as help in the so-called duties of the family. 
 
 It would undoubtedly tend to broaden this too 
 restricted interpretation of the conjugal sphere of duty, 
 if into the pledge taken both by bride and bridegroom 
 were incorporated a promise that as husband and wife the 
 two shall make their joint life subservient to the better 
 life of the community at large. In the place of the one- 
 sided giving of a ring there should be, as has long been 
 the custom among the Jews, an exchange of rings, and 
 accompanying this act of exchange the bride and bride- 
 groom should together in unison repeat some such words 
 as these : " With these rings we wed each other, 
 pledging ourselves in honour to prefer each other's good, 
 and together to live for the common good." 
 
 The note here struck is the clue to the deeper harmonies 
 of married life. But this pledge of devotion to the 
 common good should be introduced by a formula uttered 
 by the clergyman, explaining the nature of marriage as 
 society's approval of the union of the bride and bride- 
 groom. This opportunity to teach the truly social 
 significance of marriage and to check the devastating 
 inroads of individualism and anarchy in sex life cannot be 
 passed by. As an introduction, therefore, to the pledge 
 of devotion to the common good the following formulary 
 and pledges might be introduced : 
 
 A marriage ceremony is not merely a pledge between 
 the bride and the bridegroom. Human society as a whole 
 is ne of the participants in the sacrament. The marriage 
 vow is the sacrament of renewing life, and of the future 
 manhood and womanhood of the world. No other act 
 which two individuals can perform is fraught with deeper 
 
392 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 import to the community at large than the selection by 
 each of the other for the most intimate comradeship and 
 union. There may be many acts in life that concern only 
 those who engage in them. But among these cannot be 
 classed the intimacy of man and woman. Here the health 
 and sanity, the character and intelligence, the beauty and 
 the hope of the world are at stake. Those are, indeed, 
 poor interpreters of the needs of human society who 
 imagine that the relations of man and woman may be left 
 to individual caprice or be settled by private agreement. 
 The welfare of the community is no less involved than that 
 of husband and wife. The contract is not so much 
 between the man and woman as between the community on 
 the one side and the marrying couple on the other. The 
 ceremony which solemnises this compact is nothing less 
 than the act of organised society approving and confirming 
 a life union of one man and one woman, and the acknow- 
 ledgment on their part of the social responsibilities under- 
 taken by them in that union. 
 
 Such being its nature, no mere civil ceremony performed 
 by a magistrate of the law (who is never more than the 
 representative of force) can embody or convey adequately 
 the commitment by the community or the pledge of those 
 who marry. For the real compact is between society in 
 all the fullness and richness of human life and the individual 
 man and woman in their hour of deepest affection and 
 highest hope. It has, accordingly, been the custom for 
 ministers of religion, as representatives of the tenderer spirit 
 and the higher aspirations of the nation's life, to be 
 recognised as officials of the State for the purpose of 
 performing the marriage ceremony ; and where they are 
 not so recognised, it has been customary for them to add 
 to the civil another solemnisation of matrimony. 
 
 In accordance with such custom, we who arc here 
 present have been asked to be participants in a sacra- 
 ment of marriage. I now therefore invite this man and 
 this woman to stand before me, and, in the spirit and in 
 the consciousness of a most holy sacrament, to answer 
 these questions : 
 
 Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live 
 together in the honourable estate of matrimony ? Wilt 
 thou shield her, love her, comfort her, honour, obey and 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 393 
 
 keep her, in sickness and in health ; and, forsaking all 
 other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall 
 live ? 
 
 (I will.) 
 
 Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live 
 together in the honourable estate of matrimony ? Wilt 
 thou minister to him, love, honour, obey and keep him, in 
 sickness and in health ; and, forsaking all other, keep thee 
 only unto him, so long as ye both shall live ? 
 
 (I will.) 
 
 Will you join right hands, and you, , repeat 
 
 after me these words : 
 
 I, , take thee, , to my wedded 
 
 wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better 
 for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, 
 to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to 
 the holy purpose of marriage ; and thereto I plight thee my 
 troth. 
 
 Will you, , repeat these words : 
 
 I, , take thee, , to my wedded 
 
 husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for 
 better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in 
 health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, accord- 
 ing to the holy purpose of marriage ; and thereto I plight 
 thee my troth. 
 
 Will you, , place this ring upon the finger 
 
 of your bride ; will you, , place this ring upon 
 
 the finger of your bridegroom ; will you together in 
 unison repeat after me these words : 
 
 (Here would follow the pledge of devotion to the common 
 good suggested above.) 
 
 As in the parts which we have already analysed we find 
 the marriage ceremony of the Church to some extent even 
 grotesque, we are prepared for analogous defects in the 
 opening address of the priest, to which we must for a 
 moment turn our attention. 
 
 In that address it is declared that matrimony is an 
 estate which was instituted of God in the time of man's 
 innocency. Now, there never was any such time. Man 
 
394 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 is more innocent to-day than he has ever been in the past ; 
 and nobody whose imagination has been touched by the 
 evolutionary theory of development and all but the 
 most ignorant have been so touched has the least belief 
 in any such primeval state of purity. There was a 
 primitive condition of utter ignorance of right and 
 wrong, but it was the ignorance of the lower orders of 
 animal creation. The fall from that state into sin was 
 not a fall from moral innocency. If it was at that time 
 that God instituted marriage, the words should read, 
 " Instituted of God in the time of man's moral 
 ignorance." 
 
 Whether the expression " instituted of God " should 
 survive revision or not depends upon the nation's agree- 
 ment as to what the word " God " means. But if it is 
 retained, it must be explained so that there shall be no 
 doubt in anyone's mind, that matrimony is ordained of 
 the social conscience, in the interests of the unborn 
 generations of men. If " God " is cited as the authority on 
 whose will and word the institution rests, it must be made 
 evident that " God " is identical with each man's own 
 moral judgment, with enlightened public opinion, and 
 with the force and sanction of the sovereign State, as 
 embodied in all administrators of the law including the 
 police. The will of the people, the voice of the people, 
 are the will and voice, in this case, of God. If the literary 
 judgment of the nation shall decide that the word " God " 
 is to denote an intelligent Creator of the universe, then 
 the expression must be omitted, because it will carry no 
 weight of social authority and add no binding power to 
 the Church's solemnisation of matrimony. 
 
 The further statement in the priest's opening address, 
 to the effect that matrimony signifies the mystical union 
 between Christ and his Church, is altogether out of place. 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 395 
 
 It is a device of the priestly order to force attention to 
 the claims of the ecclesiastical organisation. 
 
 The reference to Christ's having wrought his first 
 miracle at a marriage ceremony should likewise be ex- 
 punged. The institution of matrimony does not require 
 supernatural sanctions, and the reference to miracles 
 damages instead of enhancing its claims in the minds 
 of those to whom the very thought of miracles is 
 repellent. Very few persons, whether they think Christ 
 divine or not, believe that by a fiat of his will he trans- 
 muted water into wine. If this reference is to be retained, 
 some qualification should be inserted which would class 
 the story in the category of legends and myths. 
 
 The statement that Christ once adorned and beautified 
 a marriage rite by his presence is less objectionable, 
 although it reflects charm rather upon Christ than upon 
 the state of matrimony. It would be a little remarkable 
 for even an ordinary mortal to abstain throughout his life 
 from participation in a rite so social and so necessary. 
 
 But altogether it is a very weak reason to offer on be- 
 half of matrimony that Christ adorned it with his presence 
 or that St Paul commended it as honourable. And the 
 only explanation of the fact that the Christian, as such, is 
 unable to find any better reasons, is that matrimony was 
 not in the times either of the Old or the New Testament 
 a distinctively religious rite. It was not only pagan but 
 civil or secular. The marriage ceremony of the Christian 
 Church is not an ordinance instituted by the Founder of 
 Christianity. The first Christians were married civilly. 
 Indeed, until 1563 marriage was counted valid by the 
 Catholic Church without ecclesiastical rite. The Bible 
 contained no special authorisation of a marriage sign. 
 Hence the fact that the compilers of the ritual had to go 
 far afield to find any so-called Bible reasons for its form. 
 
396 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 But in the latter half of the priest's opening address 
 we come upon a very wonderful and unique feature of 
 the Book of Common Prayer. It is a part which those 
 condemn who dare to say what they think ; however they 
 reverence the Prayer Book, they wish that this portion 
 could be omitted ; and I understand that among the many 
 " illegal practices " of the clergy is the omission of it. 
 My own opinion is that this part is objectionable 
 only in form ; in its intent it is the wisest and pro- 
 foundest thing in the Prayer Book. Historically it is of 
 the utmost significance. It marks the advent of socio- 
 logical and psychological, in the place of supernaturalistic 
 and miraculous, reasons for a religious ceremony. After 
 having satisfied the craving for supernaturalism by allud- 
 ing to the state of man's innocency, to the mystical 
 union between Christ and the Church, and to the miracle 
 at the wedding feast at Cana, the priest warns those 
 present that matrimony must not be " taken in hand un- 
 advisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal 
 lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no under- 
 standing ; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, 
 and in the fear of God." Then follows the newly recog- 
 nised sanction which the freedom of thought of the 
 Reformation had made potent ; the priest says that the 
 bride and bridegroom must duly consider the causes for 
 which matrimony was ordained ; and the causes which 
 he cites are all sociological and psychological. 
 
 The mere fact that he cites natural reasons of social 
 expediency shows that those who formulated this address 
 were abandoning the appeal to authority and were falling 
 back upon the moral judgment of men and their ex- 
 perience that social utility requires the regulation of 
 the love of man and woman in the community. The 
 sentence which introduces these special causes for which 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 397 
 
 matrimony was ordained does not say by whom it was 
 instituted ; but even if it implies that it was established 
 by the Creator of the universe, it assigns social utility 
 as his reason. If the implication is that the Church has 
 ordained it, then the Church found its motives in the 
 same purpose. 
 
 It is to be regretted that this first bit of sociology and 
 psychology (or, if you please, physiology) introduced 
 into the Book of Common Prayer should not have been 
 more carefully worded and more delicately thought out 
 in detail. It is the most important and encouraging 
 element in the whole of the Church's rites ; yet on 
 account of its defect of analysis and of literary form, it 
 has already been discarded by the Episcopal Church of 
 America, and it is not looked upon with favour in 
 England. My own recommendation, however, is that 
 instead of being discarded it should be amended. 
 
 The first reason here assigned as an object for which 
 matrimony was ordained is given as " the procreation of 
 children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the 
 Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name." This state- 
 ment is inexact, as well as now somewhat harsh on account 
 of the choice of words. It is not true that the object of 
 marriage is the procreation of children ; that could take 
 place without the sanction of society in its sovereign 
 capacity. Marriage is ordained in order that the children 
 shall, to use the Church's phraseology, " be brought up 
 in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of 
 his holy Name." Surely no Christian could object to 
 such a statement ; and in order that others, not 
 Christians, might find no offence, it would only be 
 necessary to translate the expression into the language of 
 the universal moral sentiment. The meaning is that 
 marriage was ordained in order that children might be 
 
398 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 brought up to be good men and women. This, I 
 may be allowed to reiterate, is more important to say 
 than any other one sentence that could be uttered in a 
 marriage ceremony. The opening address continues : 
 " Secondly, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, 
 and to avoid fornication ; that such persons as have not 
 the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves 
 undefiled members of Christ's body/' This statement 
 is not only indelicate in language : the thought under- 
 lying it has not been carefully analysed. It is incon- 
 ceivable that incontinent conduct could be made continent 
 by receiving the social sanction. Conduct must conform 
 to the intent and purpose animating the social sanction, 
 or the persons who practise it are still defiled, though 
 they were ten times "members of Christ's body." 
 Legalised incontinence, in other words, would still be 
 incontinence ; and no phrase of the marriage ceremony 
 ought even faintly to imply the contrary. It is hard, 
 however, to believe that those who formulated this 
 second cause meant so coarsely as their words sound. 
 We all know that matrimony was ordained by nations in 
 order that the love of man and woman might not work 
 mischief to the nation's life ; in some such words, then, 
 let this be stated. 
 
 The opening address of the priest ends thus : 
 "Thirdly, It was ordained for the mutual society, help, 
 and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, 
 both in prosperity and adversity. Into which holy estate 
 these two persons present come now to be joined. There- 
 fore if any man can shew any just cause, why they may 
 not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or 
 else hereafter for ever hold his peace." This third 
 reason is valid, and it might be allowed to stand 
 unchanged. 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 399 
 
 Although these three causes, and perhaps still others, 
 might be briefly indicated in some part of the marriage 
 ceremony, they are perhaps hardly suitable in the intro- 
 ductory words, which ought, if possible, to catch the 
 spirit which presumably animates the bride and bride- 
 groom, rather than the deeper-lying and almost un- 
 conscious grounds which justify the community in inter- 
 fering with the union of man and woman. It is astonish- 
 ing how little the sentiment of unselfish love is given 
 recognition in the present marriage rite. One would 
 almost suppose that idealistic reverence for the beloved, 
 and desire to serve and to remain loyal in spite of suffer- 
 ing and hardship, had never entered into the lives of those 
 who formulated the marriage rite. Is it possible that 
 monks or other professed celibates fashioned the 
 ceremony ? Surely there is none of the inspiration of 
 chivalry in any sentence or word of the present rite ; no 
 evidence of any experience of what the best men and 
 women mean by conjugal love. One could well under- 
 stand this omission had our rite descended directly from 
 the social ideas of the ancient Greeks, to whom the higher 
 sort of friendship of husbands with wives or, generally, of 
 men with women was totally unknown, thanks to the con- 
 tempt of the masculine mind for the society of women. 
 
 The present rite, therefore, it would seem, ought to 
 begin with the finest and clearest assertion that the love 
 of man and woman in conjugal union is superior to all 
 mere outward attractions. It ought to be declared to be 
 a spiritual union, a bond of mind with mind, of purpose 
 with purpose, and on this account to be unchangeable. 
 I would therefore suggest that the marriage ceremony of 
 the Church of England should open with Shakespeare's 
 words, immortal in their fine assertion of the triumph of 
 love over every adversity : 
 
400 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Let us not to the marriage of true minds 
 
 Admit impediments. Love is not love 
 Which alters when it alteration finds, 
 
 Or bends with the remover to remove : 
 Oh, no ! It is an ever-fixed mark, 
 
 That looks on tempests and is never shaken ; 
 It is the star to every wandering bark, 
 
 Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. 
 Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
 
 Within his bending sickle's compass come ; 
 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
 
 But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 
 
 After these words have been said or sung, there might 
 well follow in the opening address by the priest a setting 
 forth of the meaning of the marriage ceremony. A 
 justification of the ceremony reflects dignity upon the 
 institution of matrimony itself, which again must be 
 declared to find its foundation only in self-renouncing 
 love. As a check, therefore, to certain modern views 
 which incline to regard the ceremony as superfluous, and 
 to count sense attraction more important than the willing- 
 ness of affection to assume responsibilities, I would 
 commend as socially expedient, and at the same time 
 edifying and appropriate to the sentiment of the occasion, 
 some such exordium as the following : 
 
 The sanction of society is essential to the happiness of 
 those who would truly wed. Except they receive it, they 
 cannot be at peace with themselves or the world. Love 
 that is honourable will not hide ; it hastens to tell its glad 
 secret ; it craves that the world shall rejoice with it. 
 Herein it is to be distinguished from mere fascination and 
 selfish passion, which ofttimes delight in remaining un- 
 known to others, and may even prefer that which the 
 world would forbid, because it is forbidden. But true love 
 is as open as the day, and seeks to be commended and 
 approved, and to be safeguarded by society not only from 
 outward temptation, but also from inward weakness. This 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 401 
 
 necessary approval by the community, however, cannot be 
 conveyed, and therefore does not exist, except in some form 
 of expression. The marriage ceremony is the world's 
 actual endorsement given to a union in love of man and 
 woman. It is, therefore, of that solemn and significant 
 kind which has for centuries been known as a sacrament. 
 
 It is the one sacrament in which love and duty blend in 
 perfect harmony. It is love's pledge to the community to 
 do the thing that is right ; but, at the same time, it is the 
 voice of duty rejoicing that for once its yoke is easy and 
 its burden light. Nothing is freer from self or more ready 
 to fulfil every duty, than the love which honestly takes the 
 marriage vow. Whoever knows the nature and efrects of 
 wedded love will discern that of it can be literally said that 
 which Thomas a Kempis declares to be the nature and 
 effects of divine love. His words fit with rare precision 
 the spirit of the men and women who have unselfishly 
 united their lives. " Love is a great thing yea, a great 
 and thorough good ; by itself it makes everything that is 
 heavy light ; and it bears evenly all that is uneven. For 
 it carries a burden that is no burden, and makes everything 
 that is bitter, sweet. Love will not be kept back by 
 anything low and mean. It desires to be free and 
 estranged from all selfish affections, so that its inward 
 sight may not be hindered, that it may not be entangled 
 by any outward prosperity or subdued by any adversity. 
 Love is circumspect, humble and upright, not yielding to 
 softness or to levity ; not attending to vain things : it is 
 sober, chaste, steady, quiet and guarded in all the senses. 
 Nothing is sweeter than love ; nothing more courageous, 
 nothing higher, nothing wider ; nothing more pleasant, 
 nothing fuller or better in heaven or earth. He that loveth, 
 flieth, runneth and rejoiceth ; he is free, and is not bound. 
 He giveth all for all, and hath all in all. He respecteth 
 not the gifts, but turneth himself above all goods unto 
 the giver. Love feels no burden ; thinks nothing of 
 trouble ; attempts what is above its strength j pleads no 
 excuse of impossibility, for it thinks all things are possible 
 for itself. It is therefore able to undertake all things, and 
 it completes many things where he who does not love 
 faints and lies down. Though weary, love is not tired ; 
 
 26 
 
402 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 though pressed, it is not straitened ; though alarmed, it is 
 not confounded ; but, as a lively flame, it forces its way 
 upwards, and securely passes through all. Love is active, 
 sincere, affectionate, pleasant and amiable, courageous, 
 patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, manly, and never 
 seeking itself." 
 
 The closing sentence of the priest's opening declaration 
 in the Prayer Book, like the charge which follows it, 
 asking the couple to confess if they know any impediment 
 why they should not be lawfully joined together in 
 matrimony, is prompted by the same purpose as that 
 which inspires the publishing of the banns of marriage. 
 It is the nearest recognition in the marriage ceremony of 
 the community's claim to being a partner in every such 
 contract. It implies that the State has interests at stake. 
 It also alludes to the fact that not all unions are allowed by 
 the State, but that, on the contrary, some are branded as 
 criminal. This circumstance is directly indicated both in 
 the charge to confess and in the banns. But this charge 
 and these banns are altogether inadequate, for two reasons. 
 In the first place, the modern community, which should 
 have an opportunity to protest in case the persons ought 
 not to marry, is not reached by the publication of banns 
 in church on three successive occasions. This device was 
 perhaps adequate in the days when men and women for 
 the most part never left their native town or village, and 
 were known by everyone in the tiny social group. So 
 enlarged and complex is modern life, so wide the area of 
 individual change of domicile, so much do people travel, 
 that despite the banns persons who have no legal right to 
 be married may do so with small risk of exposure. 
 
 In place of publishing the banns in church, the central 
 Government should print and publish throughout the 
 United Kingdom the names and addresses of all applicants 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 403 
 
 for marriage. This device would not be in itself adequate. 
 Indeed, nothing would be equal to the emergency but a 
 verification of the identity of each applicant, and of the 
 correctness of his name and address. Publication in a 
 Government report thus based would prevent many of 
 the now prevalent cases where some unscrupulous man 
 or woman inveigles an innocent and ignorant person into 
 marriage. Nor could two unscrupulous persons so easily 
 as now obtain a marriage licence illegally. 
 
 The second cause, however, which renders inadequate 
 the publishing of banns lies deeper. It consists in the 
 fact that many circumstances which are not yet legal 
 barriers to marriage ought, in the interest of the nation 
 at large, to be made so. Nothing has so undermined the 
 belief in marriage as the fact that wrongs to the souls and 
 bodies of men, constituting a national peril, are perpetrated 
 with impunity under the sanction of legal marriage. 
 From the point of view of health, many persons are such 
 that whoever they marry and whatever offspring they 
 may have are in danger of misery. Everybody who 
 knows such facts feels that, if possible, such persons 
 ought to be prevented from receiving the social sanction 
 to their union. It would be possible for the State to 
 require every medical practitioner to keep a record of all 
 cases of illness which come under his notice ; these records 
 could be submitted to the central authorities, and thus 
 the health-history of every individual man and woman 
 applying for a marriage licence could be investigated, and 
 the decision as to whether the licence should be granted 
 could be made dependent upon the record. Moreover, 
 every man and woman should have a right to investigate 
 the health-history of any person who had proposed marriage 
 to him or her. 
 
 The laws, then, must be made more rigid and dis- 
 
4 o 4 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 criminating, and this new sense of the responsibility of 
 the community as the most interested partner in every 
 marriage contract will be sure to find expression in the 
 Church's solemnisation of matrimony. 
 
 There is only one other feature of the marriage cere- 
 mony as prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer which 
 deserves our attention. After a prayer by the priest for 
 blessing upon the bride and bridegroom there is to be said 
 or sung either Psalm 1 28 or Psalm 67. It well may be that 
 these are the most appropriate passages of a poetic nature 
 in the Bible, where there is any reference at all that could 
 be turned to use in a marriage ceremony. But, unless 
 there would be some calamity attached to her seeking an 
 appropriate lyric elsewhere, why should the Church confine 
 herself to the Bible ? There are scores of passages from the 
 English poets far more appropriate than either Psalm 128, 
 with its much talk about the fruitful wife and the 
 children's children, or Psalm 67, with its chauvinistic 
 sentiment. How much more appropriate that instead of 
 these should be chanted James Russell Lowell's beautiful 
 and telling lines depicting the humility, patience and 
 sweet radiance of true love ! 
 
 True love is but a humble low-born thing, 
 And hath its food served up in earthen ware ; 
 It is a thing: to walk with hand in hand, 
 
 O * 
 
 Through th' everydayness of this work-day world, 
 Baring its tender feet to every roughness, 
 Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray 
 From beauty's law of plainness and content ; 
 A simple fireside thing, whose quiet smile 
 Can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home ; 
 Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must, 
 And life in th' chill wind shivers bare and leafless, 
 Shall still be blest with Indian-summer youth 
 In bleak November, and with thankful heart 
 Smile on its ample stores of garnered fruit, 
 
THE MARRIAGE CEREMONY 405 
 
 As full of sunshine to our aged eyes 
 
 As when it nursed the blossoms of our spring. 
 
 Such is true love, which steals into the heart 
 
 With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn 
 
 That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark, 
 
 And hath its will through blissful gentleness. 
 
 For an anthem appropriate to our conception of marriage 
 as the sacrament of renewing life, the following magnifi- 
 cent lines from Swinburne could not be excelled : 
 
 With us the winds and fountains 
 
 And lightnings live in tune ; 
 And morning-coloured mountains 
 
 That burn into the noon, 
 The mist's mild veil on valleys muffled from the moon : 
 
 The thunder-darkened highlands, 
 
 And lowlands hot with fruit, 
 Sea-bays and shoals and islands, 
 
 And cliffs that foil man's foot, 
 And all the flower of large-limbed life and all the root : 
 
 With us the fields and rivers, 
 
 The grass that summer thrills, 
 The haze where morning quivers, 
 
 The peace at heart of hills, 
 The sense that kindles nature, and the soul that fills ; 
 
 The strife of things and beauty, 
 
 The fire and light adored, 
 Truth, and life-lightening duty, 
 
 Love without crown or sword, 
 That by his might and godhead makes man god and lord. 
 
 It would be wise for the ceremony to close with a 
 re-assertion of the sacramental nature of marriage and 
 the social necessity of the form to which the bride and 
 bridegroom have submitted. 
 
 The service accordingly might finish with sentences to 
 this effect : " In the lives of and 
 
4 o6 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 this hour will always shine supreme ; it will shed a 
 softening radiance over misfortune and add splendour to 
 every triumph ; not only because its vow possesses virtue 
 in itself, but also because it will remain to them for ever 
 the]symbol and prototype of each new day's new plighting 
 of love's troth." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE BURIAL SERVICE 
 
 THE opening rubric of the Order for the Burial of the 
 Dead reads thus : " Here is to be noted, that the Office 
 ensuing is not to be used for any that die unbaptised, or 
 excommunicate, or have laid violent hands upon them- 
 selves." No one, judging from the point of view of 
 common humanity and educational utility, can waver in 
 the desire that the Book of Common Prayer should be 
 revised at least to the extent of deleting this regulation. 
 Three classes of persons are denied the privilege of 
 receiving from the community the last marks of respect 
 and homage, human tenderness and pity. Yet these are 
 the very classes which the spirit of Christianity has most 
 yearned to save, and for which, according to Christian 
 doctrine, an infinite sacrifice was gladly made. It well 
 may be that a separate form of burial rite, or at least one 
 with special features of its own, should be used for each 
 of these classes of persons, but there is no reason why 
 they should be wholly excluded from the pale of our 
 national humanity. 
 
 The cruelty which animated the formulation and 
 authorisation of this rubric is so opposed to our newer 
 humanism, that it tends to awaken in us a feeling against 
 
 its authors similar to that which they undoubtedly felt 
 
 407 
 
4 o8 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 towards all human beings who died unbaptised, excom- 
 municate, or by laying violent hands upon themselves. 
 In the spirit of modern humanism, however, we must 
 restrain our revulsion by recalling to mind the historic 
 fact that the cruelty of this rubric was no peculiar and 
 special outburst of conscious inhumanity, but was 
 generally characteristic of an earlier stage of social and 
 moral evolution. It was part of that same blindness and 
 hardness which manifested itself in many customs now 
 made obsolete by the new spirit. It was one in its psychic 
 origin with the whole penal code of England. Until the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century, more than two 
 hundred different offences were punished, at least 
 nominally, by the death-penalty. Only through the 
 indefatigable enthusiasm and efforts of Jeremy Bentham 
 and his disciple Sir Samuel Romilly was this stain wiped 
 off from English life. But the removal of the same kind 
 of blot from the organised religion of England, as seen 
 in the opening rubric of the Burial Service, still awaits its 
 Bentham and Romilly. 
 
 If there be any human beings whom the Church ought 
 
 to bury with infinite tenderness and the humility of 
 
 conscious shame, it is those who have laid violent hands 
 
 on themselves. For had the Church done her work 
 
 aright, had she fulfilled her mission, none would have 
 
 been driven to the despair of self-destruction. Not even 
 
 a discrimination between the sane and the insane, nor the 
 
 legal fiction that almost all suicides are insane, can wash 
 
 the guilt of their sin from the hands of the Church. For, 
 
 had she done her work aright, the circumstances and 
 
 exigencies of life would not drive men mad. No, nor 
 
 would unfortunate creatures be born predestined by 
 
 heredity to madness. The Church herself is culpable. 
 
 Had she done her work aright during the last two 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 409 
 
 thousand years, her love and service would by now have 
 made the life of every mortal precious to himself and the 
 strength of every mortal equal to the task of self-direction. 
 
 The Church has erred egregiously in interpreting her 
 duty to those driven to self-destruction. Her especial 
 concern should have been to render homage to the 
 humanity which had lain hidden in those who did not 
 find life worth the living or themselves equal to life's 
 strain. Instead, perhaps because blinded to her own 
 guilt, she refused to bury the suicide, and still refuses to 
 do so. This whole rubric, however, will be discarded by 
 the same spirit which, more than half a century ago, 
 abolished the law and the practice of burying suicides at 
 cross-roads with a stake driven through the body. 
 
 The Prayer Book should, as I have said, furnish a 
 special rite for the reverent burying of those who have 
 been bewildered by life's contradictions. And the 
 essential burden of such a rite should be that these 
 unfortunates have been more sinned against than sinning, 
 and that, except for her unfaithfulness to her mission, 
 the Church would long since have filled the world with 
 the love that banishes despair and the self-control that 
 preserves sanity. 
 
 As to the excommunicated, the thought that the Church 
 should exercise her ghostly powers to terrorise heretics 
 into outward conformity provokes in us a smile of pitying 
 contempt ; for we are apt to think that excommunication 
 is a practice long since obsolete, and that if attempted 
 to-day it could excite no constraining dread. But in the 
 refusal of a State Church to bury an excommunicated 
 member there still exists a terrible penalty to all who, like 
 myself for instance, regard the Church as the nation 
 organised in its ideal judgments and aspirations. When 
 the Church refuses to bury its dead, the nation, as an 
 
4 io NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 organic being consisting of individual souls, consciously 
 and purposely extrudes from itself as a foreign and 
 monstrous element one of its own vital offspring. An 
 old-fashioned militant secularist might perhaps have 
 scorned the threat of being refused Christian burial ; but 
 such a person was undoubtedly oblivious of the social and 
 purely human and natural character and function of the 
 Christian Church. Even its being Christian has not 
 rendered the Church superhuman and supernatural, nor 
 has all its supernaturalism rendered it essentially inhuman 
 and, therefore, despicable or negligible. The Church of 
 England is England acting in a definite capacity, and no 
 one should be refused either England's recognition of his 
 service or England's confession of her responsibility in 
 part for his failure to think or to do aright. 
 
 Not only in idea is excommunication, through this 
 penalty of refusal of Christian burial, still an occasion of 
 dread and therefore a living power of the Church ; for 
 the refusal to bury an excommunicated person may at 
 any moment become an actual event in English life. Ex- 
 communication is not yet an obsolete practice. It was as 
 late as the eighteen-sixties that the brave and noble 
 John William Colenso, Bishop of Natal, was publicly 
 excommunicated for heresy by Bishop Gray of Capetown, 
 and it was only a happy accident that Bishop Colenso did 
 not die while still under the curse of excommunication. 
 Had he died then, England, as an organised unit of 
 spiritual life, would have been forced by this opening 
 rubric of her Burial Service into the shame and guilt of 
 withholding her homage from him. 
 
 It is a question whether the finer and broader religious 
 consciousness of our day could find any occasion for a 
 special burial rite for those whom the Church might 
 count as guilty of advocating doctrines hostile to the 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 41 1 
 
 well-being of the nation. It is conceivable that the sin 
 of heresy will never again be judged as of such a nature 
 that the stigma of spiritual ostracism could be set upon 
 it. If so, then the ordinary rite would be allowed to 
 the excommunicated. But this leads us to a principle 
 which evidently the authors of the Prayer Book refused 
 to entertain : the rite of burial by the State Church 
 should not imply that the person over whom it is per- 
 formed has been a member of the Church organisation. 
 By their very nature, the rite of baptism and the rite 
 of Holy Communion are for Church members only ; but, 
 just as the marriage ceremony should not imply formal 
 membership in the Church organisation, and need in no 
 wise imply it, so the Burial Service should be applicable 
 to the case of everyone who had been a member of the 
 nation. 
 
 From the point of view of national idealism, it has 
 been a blunder of the Church of England to count ex- 
 communication a reason for refusal of the rite of burial. 
 One cannot help feeling that the cause of such a blunder 
 was the excessive control of the clergy, as opposed to 
 the laity, in the formulations of the Church. The self- 
 interest of the clergy as a class has undoubtedly tempted 
 them, as it always tempts ruling classes, to regulate the 
 whole organisation which supports them, at the expense 
 of the larger life of the nation. It seemed to magnify 
 and glorify the Church to withhold any marks of respect 
 from those who refused formally to support the Church. 
 
 The same error which led to the excluding of the 
 excommunicate from this benefit of the Church lies at 
 the root of the rubric's refusal to allow any unbaptised 
 person to be buried according to the Church's rite. If it 
 be expedient that a special burial rite, or special features 
 of a rite, should be used in the case of Church members 
 
4 i2 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 as distinguished from citizens in general, then, from the 
 point of view of the nation as the organic unit of 
 religious life, another rite should be formulated which 
 should be applicable to members of the nation who had 
 never been initiated by baptism or any other form of ritual 
 into any religious organisation. For the consciousness 
 of the nation at large has long ago outgrown the 
 formal and mechanical prejudice which divides human 
 beings into sheep and goats, according as they have or 
 have not been initiated into the work and life of religious 
 bodies. 
 
 If there is to be a special form of burial for the un- 
 baptised, it will be altogether free from any implication 
 that the unbaptised are to be classed with moral or 
 intellectual delinquents of any kind. On the contrary, 
 the Church henceforth cannot afford to withhold deference 
 and reverence from those who for conscience' sake have 
 held aloof from organised religious fellowships. And in 
 the case of those who have remained unbaptised because 
 they had no interest in self-conscious religious teaching 
 or organisation, their peculiar individuality shall have full 
 respect given to it ; for such indifference, or even abhor- 
 rence of self-conscious religious life, may itself be due to a 
 greater sensitiveness to the vital needs of the nation as a 
 whole. It may be that at any given period, in any special 
 social group of the nation, other interests, like art or 
 science or politics, are being neglected or sacrificed to an 
 over-powerful religious interest, and that the claims of 
 these interests require special emphasis by individuals. 
 
 It will have become evident to my readers that the 
 policy of revision which I advocate in regard to the 
 Order for the Burial of the Dead is not simply that the 
 present form should be revised or replaced by another 
 one, but either that a number of different burial services 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 413 
 
 to suit the chief classes of circumstance which exist, or 
 that only alternative elements of one burial rite shall be 
 sanctioned, and the option of different combinations of 
 these elements, as they best fit the case of each person to 
 be buried, shall be left to the friends of the deceased and 
 the officiating clergyman. As in the present marriage 
 ceremony one prayer is to be omitted if the bride have 
 passed a certain age, so special rubrics could indicate 
 upon what occasions certain elements of a burial rite 
 were to be used. 
 
 If the point of view involved in this policy be adopted, 
 it must colour and in great part modify our criticism of 
 the various parts of the existing order of burial. Many 
 a part, if alternatives are to be permitted, might be allowed 
 to stand, which otherwise one would be tempted to 
 remove entirely. Any part of a ritual, however offensive 
 in itself, if it be not compulsory, becomes thereby almost 
 wholly innocuous. As regards my own criticism, there- 
 fore, I shall be found most lenient towards certain parts 
 of the present Burial Service, on the understanding that 
 they become optional instead of compulsory. Only such 
 a proposal seems to me consistent with the point of 
 view of an all-comprehensive nationalism and with due 
 deference for the private taste and judgment of every 
 individual person. The policy of alternatives would 
 make it possible for the extremest freethinker and the 
 intensest High Churchman to receive equal homage in 
 death from the State Church. Then, while a rite con- 
 genial to the most literal and old-fashioned interpreters 
 of Bible doctrine and of Church ceremony would be 
 available, there need be no dissenters and no protestants. 
 
 What is still more, certain moral anomalies which now 
 exist would cease for ever. At present the Church of 
 England performs its burial rite over the bodies of 
 
4H NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 persons who throughout their lives have openly pro- 
 claimed their rejection of the whole fabric of conventional 
 religion. Noting this fact, one might be tempted cynically 
 to smile at the weakness and self-deception of those who 
 boast themselves independent in thought and defiant 
 of conventional opinion, and yet are quite ready to receive 
 the last homage from the very institution they have 
 attacked. How was it consistent, it may be asked, in 
 Professor Huxley, that he should have protested so 
 valiantly against the "drum ecclesiastic," and yet have 
 allowed it to be beaten triumphantly over his own body 
 the moment his ears were stopped in death ? Nor could 
 anyone recalling the intense sincerity and exquisite loyalty 
 to truth revealed in Sir Leslie Stephen's Agnostic s Apology 
 have felt it to be other than impiety towards the dead that 
 Stephen should be buried by the Church's rite. These 
 men must either have signified their willingness to be so 
 buried, or else have expressed indifference as to what 
 burial rite was performed over them. It is inconceivable 
 that loving friends, unless they had known at least of such 
 indifference, should have allowed anything to be uttered 
 which went counter to the life and mission of the dead. 
 It would, however, not have been timidity or cowardice in 
 the departed to have allowed this, but an extreme absence 
 of the thought of self, and a modest shrinking from any 
 honour, however conventional, which should be paid to 
 them personally. One may respect the feeling which 
 might prompt them to say that in their own case it 
 made no difference what words were uttered over their 
 dead bodies, and that friends might do as they pleased ; 
 and yet one may deplore the consequences. It was the 
 thought of these that led Mr Herbert Spencer, in making 
 arrangements that his remains should be cremated, to 
 provide that there should not be " any such ceremony as 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 415 
 
 is performed over the bodies or ashes of those who adhere 
 to the current creed." But this request alone would have 
 prevented Mr Spencer's being interred in the Abbey. 
 Shall the nation never be allowed to honour such moral 
 pioneers in death ? One cannot but feel that the spiritual 
 benefits to the nation would be incalculable if alternative 
 forms were sanctioned by the Church, and if these forms 
 were so varied in sentiment, however identical in spirit 
 and purpose, as to cover fittingly such divergent cases as 
 those of Stephen, Spencer, Huxley and Darwin on the 
 one hand, and Gladstone and Pusey on the other. 
 
 In the light of these preliminary suggestions, I invite 
 my reader to consider with me the various parts of the 
 existing burial rite, so as to judge whether it is adequate 
 or not to the national function which it is intended to 
 perform ; and, if not, what its special defects are, and 
 how they are to be remedied. 
 
 In order thus to judge, we must have clearly in mind 
 a standard of what a burial service should be. We must 
 know what ideas we would require it to express, and 
 what not to express. We must know what emotions 
 we would wish it to awaken and what to allay. We 
 must further have clearly in mind what the ultimate 
 effect is which we wish the whole service to produce 
 upon the character of those who participate in or witness 
 the ceremony. Having thus clearly in mind the definite 
 outlines of an ideal service, we must discover how far 
 literature and the other arts which contribute to the 
 purpose of ritual provide us with the materials for the 
 embodiment of our ideal. If the materials be not already 
 at hand in literature, the gaps must be filled in by 
 compositions especially devised for the purpose. Thus 
 equipped, we shall be able to place the ideal scheme and 
 its embodiment in provisional form side by side with the 
 
4 i 6 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 existing service of the Church, and by comparison can 
 estimate for ourselves the degree to which the existing 
 service is adequate or deficient. 
 
 Perhaps, from what has gone before, we may assume 
 that not one rigid form but only various items or elements 
 of a burial service should be authorised, option being 
 allowed to friends of the deceased and to the officiating 
 clergyman to select parts consonant with the special circum- 
 stance. As we reflect upon the varieties of circumstance, 
 we are led to feel that one great classification which 
 must be taken into consideration is the division between 
 those whose lives have on the whole been successful 
 as regards the higher ends of existence and those whose 
 lives have been failures. If the dominant note, as one 
 reflects upon the career of the deceased, is that of gratitude 
 and of the peculiar form of rejoicing when one contem- 
 plates the fulfilment and perfection of any beautiful and 
 noble work, it seems almost impossible that this sentiment 
 should not find itself reflected in the burial ceremony. 
 Where, however, the person to be buried is one whose 
 life was marked by prolonged suffering or deficiency of 
 any kind, physical, mental or social, the feeling awakened 
 in mourners and the public at large is of a totally different 
 order. There may be the same tenderness, but the regret 
 is not sweetened so much by gratitude and admiration as 
 by sympathetic rejoicing at the release and deliverance 
 from pain or error which death has brought about. The 
 Church, then, should sanction one statement fitted to the 
 one circumstance and another to the other. No expression 
 of homage and of the consolation to be derived by 
 mourners who have lost a revered friend is to be found 
 in the present Burial Service of the Church. No hint 
 that there ever was such a thing as human dignity in an 
 individual life or an occasion for spiritual gratitude to a 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 
 
 finite mortal is there embodied. Wholly and absolutely 
 are such emotions turned towards an infinite Creator of 
 the universe and of human existence. But even thus 
 turned, the sentiment is totally unrelated to any human 
 excellence as an occasion of gratitude to man's maker. 
 Unqualifiedly, from beginning to end of the Burial Service, 
 does the thought dominate that all human life, all human 
 effort, all human purpose, striving and aspiration are 
 vanity. The present Burial Service soothes (if it soothes) 
 by turning the attention utterly away from the earthly 
 career of man, and it attempts to produce this effect by 
 proclaiming the worthlessness of earth-life except as the 
 stepping-stone to a worthier existence beyond the grave. 
 No words except the phrase " Our dear brother " in the 
 whole burial rite even hint at what must, throughout the 
 ages when this form has been used, have been the dominant 
 emotion and sentiment in every case where friends have 
 gathered to pay homage to their revered dead. I have 
 spoken of the Burial Service as an act of respect and 
 homage to the departed, but I have not meant to imply 
 that the rite of the Church gives any expression to these 
 feelings. They of course have always existed, but the 
 Church hitherto has been rendered deaf and blind to them 
 by dogmas which did not embrace them in its scheme of 
 spiritual discipline. 
 
 Let us say, then, that one ideal feature for a certain 
 class of burials must be the expression of loyalty and 
 reverence to the dead, and of humility, and a sense on the 
 part of the mourners that in comparison with the departed 
 they themselves have been unworthy of the blessed 
 presence of such a life as they have now lost. As regards 
 an embodiment of this sentiment ready at hand and 
 suitable to be appropriated by the Church, I find many 
 scattered expressions of it, and I have made bold to take 
 
 27 
 
4 i 8 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 such from a number of writers and place them in an 
 order that at least approximately gives to them a pro- 
 gressive arrangement and creates an impression of unity. 
 I invite my readers to judge of the following formulation 
 as a possible part in a burial service from the point of 
 view chiefly of the effect it would be likely to have in 
 toning up the mourners and friends to that quality of 
 heart and that strenuousness of will which are of most 
 service to a nation : 
 
 To our friends and loved ones we shall give the most 
 worthy honour and tribute, if we never say nor remember 
 that they are dead, but contrariwise that they have lived ; 
 that hereby the brotherly force and flow of their action 
 and work may be carried over the gulfs of death and made 
 immortal in the true and healthy life which they worthily 
 had and used. The dead are not dead if we have loved 
 them truly. In our own lives we give them immortality. 
 
 Let us arise and take up the work they have left un- 
 finished, and preserve the treasures they have won, and 
 round out the circuit of their being to the fullness of an 
 ampler orbit in our own. 
 
 There is so much selfishness in grief ; overwhelmed with 
 a sense of loss, we are apt to think of nothing else. Rather 
 with a noble resignation and thankfulness for what they 
 have been to us should we consign our dear ones to the 
 grave. 
 
 When are the good so powerful to guide and quicken, 
 as after death has withdrawn them from us ? Then we 
 feel that the seal is set upon what was made perfect in their 
 souls. They take their place like stars in a region of purity 
 and peace. 
 
 But it is a sad weakness, after all, that the thought of a 
 man's death hallows him anew to us ; as if life were not 
 sacred too as if it were comparatively a light thing to fail 
 in love and reverence to the brother who has to climb the 
 whole toilsome steep with us, and all our tears and tender- 
 ness were due to the one who is spared that hard journey. 
 Oh, the anguish of that thought, that we can never atone 
 to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them, for the 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 419 
 
 light answers we returned to their plaints or their pleadings, 
 for the little reverence we showed to that sacred human 
 soul that lived so close to us ! 
 
 Arise, be strong ! Thou art not free, thou poor and sadly 
 stricken one, to stand aside in idle woe, but thou shalt make 
 for the departed a memorial in thy life. The knowledge 
 that something must be done calls us away from brooding 
 over our griefs, and forces us back into the active currents of 
 our life. Only the discharge of the duties of the heart can 
 really console the heart. The love thou canst no longer 
 lavish on one, the many call for it. The sympathy thou 
 canst no longer give thy friend, the friendless cry for it. 
 In alleviating the misery of others thine own misery will be 
 alleviated, and in healing thou wilt find that there is cure. 
 
 It is not that we are singled out for a special judgment ; 
 when we give up our dead, we but enter into a common 
 sorrow, a sorrow that visits the proudest and the humblest, 
 that has entered into unnumbered hearts before us and will 
 enter into innumerable ones after us, a sorrow that should 
 make the world one, and dissolve all other feelings into 
 sympathy and love. 
 
 A number of hymns in harmony with this sentiment 
 and appropriate for singing at a burial are to be found. 
 One is that by Mr Malcolm Quin, containing the lines : 
 
 They cannot die whose lives are part 
 
 Of that great life which is to be, 
 Whose hearts beat with the world's great heart, 
 
 And throb with its high destiny. 
 
 Then mourn not those who, dying, gave 
 
 A gift of greater life to man ; 
 Death stands abashed before the brave ; 
 
 They own a life he may not ban. 
 
 Another feature in a burial rite appropriate where the 
 deceased has been loved and revered would be some 
 apposite statement of what is perhaps the deepest, most 
 tender and awe-inspiring experience known to the loving 
 mourner. The experience to which I refer I have found 
 
420 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 nowhere expressed in literature in a manner suitable for 
 incorporation into a burial rite. So far as I am aware, 
 it has been nowhere formulated as a fundamental principle, 
 or perhaps even recognised as of universal applicability. 
 It is true that in a specific historic instance and in its 
 highest intensity, with great beauty and with the dramatic 
 power of utter sincerity, it is to be found in the New 
 Testament, and is familiar to us all ; but the very per- 
 fection of its embodiment there has blinded men to the 
 universality of the psychic law which its supreme instance 
 illustrates, and to the operation of that law in a minor 
 degree in all cases in which the essential factors exist. 
 
 We are told in the New Testament story that when 
 Jesus had died, those who had loved him and worked 
 with him, instead of relaxing their devotion to him and 
 the cause for which he had rendered up his life, drew 
 closer to one another, in order to dedicate themselves 
 with more unremitting zeal to him and his mission, that 
 his life's work might suffer as little as possible by his 
 bodily absence, and that his meaning and spirit might be 
 obscured no more than was inevitable through the with- 
 drawal of his personal radiance. The result was wholly 
 unanticipated by them. From out the inmost heart of 
 their concentrated grief burst forth an intenser fire of 
 energy, love and joy than they had ever known before. 
 Hitherto they had by intimacy of contact with their 
 master become living souls ; but now, like him, they 
 became quickening spirits. They had lost him outwardly, 
 when lo ! within themselves what seemed an inexplicable 
 mystery and miracle had been wrought. Now it was he 
 in them, and not simply, as of old, they in him. Wonder- 
 ful and rare, not to have been foreseen, discoverable only 
 in the actual experience, and then hardly to be believed, 
 was this transformation of bereavement into the triumph 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 421 
 
 of spiritual identity. Yet it was not the same as before 
 his death ; and so they called the inward Christ not 
 Jesus but the Comforter. Now, what happened in the 
 life of the disciples in the highest degree, and for the first 
 time in history with such full self-consciousness as to 
 become articulate and a gospel of glad tidings, occurs in 
 the souls of all mourners in proportion as they are to their 
 dead as the disciples to their Lord. The Church has 
 hitherto jealously magnified the special instance of the 
 operation of this law, but in the future the glory of the 
 experience testified to in the New Testament story will 
 be that it was not an isolated and unique incident but the 
 revealing instance of what will some day be a world-wide 
 spiritual occurrence. Yet, if ever the pentecostal blessing 
 is to become universal, it will be because spiritual states- 
 men have brought to mourners everywhere, in the Burial 
 Services sanctioned of nations, not only the instance but 
 the law of the instance of the coming of the Comforter to 
 the Apostles. 
 
 In the case of those whose death cannot be otherwise 
 regarded than as a deliverance from misfortune, mistake 
 and suffering, the kindest and wisest form of burial may 
 perhaps be one in which only the universal principles of 
 duty and the general significance of death are dwelt upon, 
 and no reference at all is made to the individual life and 
 character of the departed. Indeed, as regards lives that 
 have been lamentable failures, the present Burial Service 
 is altogether appropriate in so far as it renders no honour 
 to the memory of the dead ; yet in other respects, even 
 for the burial of the unfortunate, the existing rite may be 
 found sadly defective. But while no allusion to the 
 sadness of the special life may sometimes be most con- 
 siderate, in all except the extremest cases of misfortune 
 it would be socially and morally expedient to bring home 
 
422 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 to mourners and the interested public certain specific 
 ideas. Especially would the thought be helpful, that it 
 is wrong to brood over the deceased's hours of greatest 
 pain and over the aspects of his career which are most 
 distressing, as if they especially revealed the real and 
 deepest life and character of the departed or had any 
 value of their own. It is no more wise than it is kind 
 or true to allow our thoughts to dwell chiefly upon the 
 shadow and the weakness which have obscured the human 
 ideal in the mind or body of a fellow-mortal. The pre- 
 sent Burial Service, as it gives no recognition to the 
 beauty, joy and excellence even of the best of men, is 
 naturally still further removed from the sentiment for 
 which I am here pleading. As I have found, and so can 
 offer, no appropriate embodiment of the idea which I am 
 suggesting, I may be permitted, in order the more fully to 
 illustrate my meaning, to narrate that it was my privilege, 
 not long since, to speak at the funeral of a man 
 who had died after many months of extreme mental and 
 physical suffering. During this period of decline his 
 mind had been preyed upon by unfounded self-reproaches 
 and by anxieties and forebodings for his family ; in a 
 moment of such despair he had once attempted to take 
 his own life. His story was this : as a young working 
 man, thrifty and ambitious, he had bought a house and 
 for years had been paying for it by instalments. At the 
 time when his health gave way, all had been paid up but 
 the last few instalments, and the inability to meet these 
 final payments drove him to despair. Here was a lifetime 
 devoted with unflagging conscientiousness to the protec- 
 tion and care of wife and children. But the last painful 
 weeks had so overshadowed the remembrance of the real 
 character and the true life of the husband and father that 
 the family seemed unable to recall anything but the bitter 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 423 
 
 end. At the funeral I had read and spoken words which 
 it seemed to me must bring strength and peace. But the 
 mourners sat as if crushed in spirit ; until, remembering 
 what had been told me of the man's life, I said to them 
 that it was their duty not to think of him as he was in 
 the last weeks and the last hours of his life ; for this was 
 not the real husband and father, as already he had begun 
 to be touched by the spirit of death ; but it was their 
 duty to think of him only in the full vigour of his man- 
 hood, when the wish of his heart and the inspiration of 
 his life was to provide well and honourably for them. 
 At last I had struck the note which made the chords of 
 love in their hearts vibrate in living response. The eyes 
 of the mourners were raised to mine in grateful acknow- 
 ledgment. My words had lifted the burden, and with it 
 the awful, numbing pain, from their souls. This thought 
 they had never heard before that the hour of death is 
 as nothing, but that the man at his best, his steady purpose 
 through a whole life-span, his years of work and self- 
 denial for those he loves, are everything. Here, it seems 
 to me, is a thought which should not be forgotten when 
 the Burial Service is readapted, in the spirit of humanity, 
 to the nation's needs. 
 
 Akin to the thought that we owe it to the departed to 
 think of him at his best, to regard what he aspired to be 
 as perhaps his essential self, rather than what he became, 
 is the sense that for him death came as a deliverance ; 
 and an utterance of this sentiment worthy of the sublimest 
 ritual is found in the lines of Shelley's " Adonais " : 
 
 He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; 
 Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, 
 
 And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
 Can touch him not and torture not again j 
 
 From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
 He is secure. . . . 
 
4 2 4 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 As we compare such lines as these with the finest rhetoric 
 of the Book of Common Prayer, we are compelled to wonder 
 whether those who give unstinted praise to the English of 
 the Church ritual do not first banish from their minds all 
 memory of the winged language of our British poets. 
 
 Besides classifying the livesof mortals into those that have 
 achieved fullness of existence and those who have fallen short 
 of its richest fulfilments, a cross-division naturally suggests 
 itself into those, on the one hand, who have died pre- 
 maturely, yet to the end have given promise of full realisa- 
 tion ; and, on the other, those who have reached the natural 
 length of man's life. It seems to me that the people of a 
 nation should be disciplined by their spiritual teachers into 
 a familiar acquaintance with the distinction between death 
 as an inevitable event terminating the normal span of 
 individual existence that is, death due to the constitu- 
 tionally inherent decline of vitality characteristic of all 
 individuals of a species and death which antagonises 
 and thwarts, so to speak, the vital law of the individual 
 organism by preventing the full development of which it is 
 inherently capable. Such a distinction seems worthy of em- 
 phasis in the scheme of a nation's moral education, because 
 premature deaths are something worse than mere deaths, 
 and the bitterness in the grief they cause cannot justly 
 be attributed to death as such ; they are preventable, and 
 therefore are in a sense crimes of negligence or of positive 
 injury, which the nation as a whole, by help of science, can, 
 and in the course of time will, prevent. So that when 
 children die, or men or women in the full vigour of their 
 powers, there is an occasion for the expression of a 
 peculiar and a poignant guilt and shame, for the mourning 
 of penance, and a renewal of the vow of social service. 
 But here literature furnishes us, as yet, with no material. 
 
 When poets reared in the new humanism break away 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 425 
 
 from the conventional notions of death and its significance 
 in human society, their threnodies will educate the people 
 to count the young and the vigorous who have died in 
 the midst of happiness and hope as not themselves 
 suffering misfortune. For there can be no doubt that at 
 any instant a human life that is filled with gladness and 
 has reached the perfection which at that instant constitutes 
 its normal growth, is a perfected and completed whole, 
 which cannot be contemplated without a sense that in 
 itself it needs nothing which time could add. There can 
 be no doubt that an unthwarted life is at every instant a 
 finished product. Whatever promise of further fulfil- 
 ment it may contain is in reference not to a something 
 incomplete in itself, but in the social life round about it 
 which needs and hopes for more. When the happy young 
 and the vigorous die, the grief can never be essentially 
 pity for the dead, but regret for those who remain. We 
 may then literally rejoice, in proportion as our love is 
 selfless and yet personal, for those who die in the perfection 
 of gladness and strength. And somewhere in the ritual 
 for the burial of the young and the strong there must 
 enter in this note of homage to the beauty and dignity of 
 the life which, in proportion as it is a loss to society, has 
 suffered no injury by its untimely ending. For that 
 untimeliness is only by reference to the needs of others. 
 We might say that society's sense of loss is the measure 
 of the self-completeness of the life that has been closed. 
 
 The discrimination which I have made between death 
 in itself and the extraneous evil to society involved in 
 what I may call violent and unnatural death, leads me to 
 plead for the insertion in our Burial Service of some 
 recognition of the naturalness, the universality, the tender 
 beneficence to the individual, and the moral necessity to 
 society, of natural death, and a refutation and condem- 
 
426 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 nation, as superstitious and sinful, of the notion that 
 death is an enemy to human purpose, and is the arch- 
 terror for the human heart. This common notion is a 
 falsehood, which needs only to be branded as such in 
 order to be exposed as such. There has been what seems 
 almost like a conscious conspiracy against mankind to 
 prevent it from recognising the benignant features of the 
 face of death. As Francis Bacon mildly describes this 
 conspiracy, " Most of the doctrines concerning death are 
 more cautionary and dreadful than the nature of things 
 requireth. They have increased the fear of death in 
 offering to cure it. For when they would have a man's 
 whole life to be but a discipline or preparation to die, 
 they must needs make men think that it is a dreadful 
 enemy, against whom there is no end of preparing." 
 The attribution of superstitions to the conscious device 
 and cunning of priests of the supernatural has for a 
 generation or more been stigmatised as superficial and 
 unfounded. But so evidently have priests utilised their 
 ascendency and their assumed intimacy with the secrets of 
 another world, so closely is this excessive caution and 
 dread of death to be traced to the teachings of priests, that 
 I have no doubt there will be before long a return, on the 
 part of students of comparative religion, to the belief that 
 the conscious self-interest of priests prompted this clothing 
 of death in fictitious horrors. It is true that the Church 
 of England Burial Service indulges in no such mis- 
 representation ; but it does worse. In its assertion of 
 physical resurrection it presupposes that death is the arch- 
 terror ; for why else should one deny that death was death ? 
 If death be no such terror, why should not the Burial 
 Service even recognise the possibility that it may involve 
 the annihilation of the individual self-consciousness ? 
 From the point of view of society at large, the individual, 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 427 
 
 through the absoluteness of his withdrawal from human co- 
 operation the instant he dies, is converted to nothing 
 annihilated. And such annihilation cannot conceivably in 
 itself be a calamity to any individual, nor in anticipation 
 can it be a cause of terror to one whose interest and 
 purpose are beyond his own self-preservation. In my 
 judgment, the Burial Service should assert the naturalness, 
 the universality and the tender benignity of normal death. 
 I am aware that those who are anxious to maintain the 
 present doctrine of death as embodied in the Church's 
 burial rite are attempting to dissuade the public from 
 criticising it adversely by pointing out, as the alternative 
 to the Church's views, what they call the view of death 
 which must naturally arise in the spirit of one who, 
 having cast off the orthodox discipline of the Church, 
 meets the death of beloved friends by no religious dis- 
 cipline, but simply allows the experience of grief to work 
 its own will in the passive spirit of his bereaved soul. 
 Comparing the wistful yearning of such so-called agnostics 
 with the strong confidence of those who never for an 
 instant have doubted the doctrine of the material resur- 
 rection and the spiritual continuance of the dead in the 
 presence of Christ and the angels as if these two attitudes 
 of mind were the only possible ones they find the whole 
 advantage to be on the side of the unquestioning believer 
 in the Church's dogmas. But I protest, in the name of 
 common experience and of truth and logic, that it is 
 wholly unjust to weigh against the conventional believer 
 the soul of one who for conscience' sake has cast off the 
 teachings of the Church, but has not yet come under the 
 discipline of any other philosophy of life and death. The 
 mind of one who, perhaps with a mighty struggle and 
 anguish, has cast off teachings which his judgment had 
 grown to resent as untrue and pernicious, but has not yet 
 
428 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 found other interpretations to take their place, cannot 
 fairly be described as the mind of the natural man. For 
 it is natural that the man shall of himself construct in 
 thought principles which to him shall interpret his deepest 
 experiences and which shall justify what he feels to be the 
 supreme ends of existence. This being the case, it cannot 
 be permitted to the defenders of the present dogmas in- 
 volved in the Burial Service to say, as they do, that if its 
 doctrines be abandoned we shall have to introduce literary 
 expressions of the agnostic's pathetically hopeless cravings. 
 These undoubtedly find in modern literature exquisite 
 utterance. For example, there are Swinburne's lines, in 
 his " Ave atque Vale : In Memory of Charles Baudelaire," 
 where he cries : 
 
 Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow, 
 
 Far too far off for thought or any prayer. 
 
 What ails us with thee, who art wind and air ? 
 What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow ? 
 
 Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire, 
 
 Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire j 
 Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find. 
 
 Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies, 
 
 The low light fails us in elusive skies ; 
 Still the foiled earnest ear is deaf, and blind 
 
 Are still the eluded eyes. 
 
 It is evident from these lines that Swinburne had never 
 heard of the glad fact that there is a Comforter, and that 
 he is always ready to bless. Or is it that the character of 
 Baudelaire even if not that of the poet who mourned 
 his death and the relation between them, did not contain 
 the factors which condition the inpouring of the Spirit ? 
 But even so, if there be souls disciplined to nothing 
 deeper than Swinburne's mood, should they not be per- 
 mitted to voice it at the burial of one they love ? 
 
 Yet when we discard views of death which seem to us in- 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 429 
 
 compatible with facts or unjustifiable because un verifiable, it 
 does not follow that we must catch up with any the first 
 and most superficial thought about death which obtrudes 
 itself upon us ; nor are we compelled to dwell upon the 
 direst aspect of our loss. Of a thousand moods and views, 
 no one of which contradicts the requirements of a critical 
 imagination, it behoves educational statesmen to select for 
 presentation in ritual those which will most tenderly call 
 back the heart of the bereaved to the remaining interests 
 and duties of life, and will tone up their stricken will to 
 an unprecedented strength of purpose. Over-against the 
 doctrines of the traditional discipline should be set not the 
 groping fancies of rudderless wills in conflict with grief 
 but the teachings of the new humanism, none the less 
 inward and spiritual because social in outlook, virile in 
 purpose and keen in zest of work and achievement. 
 
 Among the views which no philosophic scepticism can 
 impugn falls to be considered first, although it be the 
 least inspiring, the doctrine of the naturalness of death. 
 Perhaps no better formulation of it for liturgic use can 
 be found or could be devised than is contained in these 
 words from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius : 
 
 Do not despise death, but be well content with it, since 
 this too is one of those things which nature wills. For 
 such as it is to be and to grow old, and to increase and to 
 reach maturity, and to have teeth and beard and grey hairs, 
 and to beget and to be pregnant and bring forth, and all 
 other natural operations which the seasons of thy life bring, 
 such also is dissolution. This, then, is consistent with the 
 character of a reflecting man, to be neither careless nor 
 impatient nor contemptuous with respect to death, but to 
 wait for it as one of the processes of nature. 
 
 A second doctrine, which is not only beyond question 
 but which every spiritual teacher must recognise as alto- 
 gether beneficial in its disciplinary effect, is that in the 
 
430 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 economy of species the universal fact of the death of 
 individuals cannot be an evil, but that on the contrary 
 it deserves not only our calm acceptance but a joyous 
 welcome. The most precious characteristics of human 
 life cannot be conceived as possible 3 except on the basis 
 that individuals cease to be ; and therefore, to one who 
 loves his race more than himself, anything but praise of 
 death as a cosmic institution is impossible. 
 
 Indeed, even as concerns the individual's own outlook, 
 it is intellectually and emotionally impossible not to be 
 reconciled to the fact of normal death. If we consider 
 the case of great sufferers or evil-doers, we can but rejoice 
 that their earth-life comes to an absolute end. And I 
 have of late heard champions of the Church doctrine dis- 
 courage as unworthy of active workers any rejoicing in 
 anticipation of their own death. These cavillers say that 
 to greet death as a friendly visitant is incompatible with a 
 sense of one's own spiritual dignity, and must be placed 
 on the level of yawning from physical fatigue after the 
 day's drudgery. But no unbiassed person, knowing well 
 the deeper trends and purer emotions of human nature, 
 could trace any gladness at the approach of death to 
 drowsiness of the spirit, for there is no such attribute of 
 mind. Smiles in welcome of death radiate only from 
 souls that love righteousness. To saints death is "dear" 
 and "beauteous" ; hence poets call it 
 
 the jewel of the just, 
 Shining nowhere but in the dark ; 
 
 but no human testimony reports that it has ever revealed 
 its radiance to the base. Accordingly, in praising death as 
 such, the liturgy of the Church would be speaking the 
 secret disclosed only to the good, and thereby would be 
 witnessing for righteousness. 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 431 
 
 But to arrive at peace with death does not involve a 
 benumbing of oneself to the anguish of bereavement. 
 The mourner for whom death is thus swallowed up in 
 victory does not cease to feel when a loved one dies that 
 
 this losing is true dying, 
 This is lordly man's down-lying, 
 This his slow but sure reclining, 
 Star by star his world resigning ; 
 
 but he experiences the "joy that includes all the pain, 
 includes it and transforms it and transcends it " ; for 
 him, "the Light of the World is a light that is satu- 
 rated with the darkness which it has overcome and 
 transfigured." 
 
 No one who asks what attitude ought to be encouraged 
 can fail to see that it would be socially advantageous if, 
 although not holding unverifiable doctrines, men could 
 await their own death and that of their loved ones 
 not only without terror or with indifference but with a 
 sense that all is well. That citizen will be most happy 
 and efficient who is not only glad to stay to the- 
 end, but at the end, even in face of the possibility of 
 personal annihilation, is glad to go. This attitude should 
 be encouraged. The liturgy of the Burial Service should 
 include fitting embodiments of it, such as are to be found 
 abundantly in prose and verse. It is expressed with 
 dignity in William Cullen Bryant's lines : 
 
 So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
 The innumerable caravan that moves 
 To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take 
 His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
 Thou go not like the quarry slave at night, 
 Scourged to his dungeon ; but, sustained and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
 Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 
 
4J2 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 It is heard again in Mr Malcolm Quin's stately hymn, 
 where the lines occur : 
 
 Not endless life but endless love I crave. 
 The gladness and the calm of holier springs, 
 
 The hope that makes men resolute and brave, 
 The joyful life in the great life of things. 
 
 The soul that loves and works will need no praise, 
 But, fed with sunlight and with morning breath, 
 
 Will make our common days eternal days, 
 
 And fearless greet the mild and gracious death. 
 
 And it is not impossible that the revisers of the Burial 
 Service will see fit to substitute for one of its three 
 opening sentences, or to add as supplementary, these words 
 from Whitman : 
 
 Praised be the fathomless universe 
 
 For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, 
 And for love, sweet love ; but praise ! praise ! praise ! 
 For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death. 
 
 In order to make clear the consistency of such laudation 
 of death with energetic effort in working for the chief 
 ends of life, it will be necessary for the burial rite to 
 remind mourners that the death of individuals never can 
 thwart the purpose of a good life, because its ends are the 
 immediate consciousness of doing right, and the social 
 order, which not only survives but even requires the 
 death of the individual. Mourners must have been 
 disciplined emotionally and intellectually to identify the 
 eternal life with that which spends itself for the com- 
 munity ; then it will be possible for them to resolve the 
 great paradox of righteousness, that by losing his life man 
 finds it ; then they can enter into the exultation of such 
 words as these : 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 
 
 Bring, Death, thy wintry blight 
 The darkness of the night 
 
 That hath no star ! 
 'Tis not of life the length, 
 It is the depth and strength 
 Eternal are. 
 
 433 
 
 Or these : 
 
 Hath man no second life ? Pitch this one high ! 
 Sits there no judge in heaven our sin to see ? 
 More strictly, then, the inward judge obey ! 
 
 Or these : 
 
 Doth life resemble clouds that come and go ? 
 Or fitful sparks that but a moment glow ? 
 
 Not so ! 
 
 Man's life is vast, and deeper than the sea ; 
 His purpose giveth birth to destiny ; 
 He moulds and carves his own futurity. 
 
 There can be no doubt that, irrespective of the Church's 
 dogmas, the discipline of moral experience engender* in 
 the soul of man a deep organic sense of the friendliness 
 of death. This sense is prior to any theory or philosophy 
 which can explain and justify it to the logical judgment 
 and classify it in any system of common sense. On the 
 mere basis of the fact that men of deepest insight, though 
 holding mutually conflicting theories, love death as much 
 as they love life, we are justified, with Whitman, in 
 praising death. We are even justified, with Plato, in 
 asserting that no evil can befall a good man in death. 
 But this organic sense that death is no evil does not 
 furnish a logical justification for the statement either that 
 death involves the extinction of the individual conscious- 
 ness or that the individual consciousness survives it. 
 
 It must never be forgotten that the doctrines both of the 
 survival of the spirit and of the resurrection of the body 
 
 28 
 
434 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 have been invented to account for the deep organic love and 
 admiration of the just for death, and that this admiration 
 is not itself by any means a consequence of the doctrines 
 which were invented to explain it. They are at best but 
 myths, the truth behind them being the glad acceptance 
 of death. If, therefore, we accept only as poetic, as a 
 myth, any statement in regard to death which transcends 
 verification, we are altogether justified. We then enter- 
 tain it only tentatively, as an approximate but evidently 
 inadequate explanation of some prior emotional valuation. 
 In this way it seems to me allowable to entertain 
 the thought of personal immortality, and even of the 
 resurrection of the body ; and passages in the present 
 Burial Service which assert these doctrines might well be 
 allowed to stand, provided their use be optional and not 
 compulsory. Were the use of them thus made optional, 
 only those would use them who found their emotion, as 
 it were, interpreted by them and assigned a place in their 
 own scheme of existence. There can be no doubt that 
 the valiant sense of superiority to death which accompanies 
 heroic and defiant love acts exactly as if death did not 
 annihilate the individual existence either of spirit or body. 
 This is no proof that it will not have such an effect, but 
 it is an imaginative presentation of the mood of the 
 valiant lover. Thus it is that Browning's assertion of 
 faith in reunion with the one he loves, in the poem 
 "Prospice," is sublime and possesses entire subjective 
 truth even for a reader who does not for an instant 
 believe its assertions to be objectively valid. The valiant 
 lover feels and acts as he would feel and act if things were 
 to be as Browning says that 
 
 The black minute's at end, 
 
 And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, 
 Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 435 
 
 Shall change ; shall become first a peace out of pain, 
 
 Then a light, then thy breast, 
 O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 
 
 And with God be the rest ! 
 
 What the believers, however, in spiritual or material 
 resurrection for the individual must learn is to allow 
 equal liberty of assertion to those who altogether deny 
 any such continuance after death. For one needs only to 
 note the emotional accompaniment of dogmatic denials of 
 immortality in order to discover that they have their 
 origin in exactly the same valiant superiority to death out 
 of which the Christian dogmas have arisen. They, there- 
 fore, should allow in a national Burial Service the option 
 of the denial as well as the affirmation of immortality, 
 though they may protest that the denial is as unverifiable 
 as the affirmation. Those who deny existence after death 
 look upon death as the great deliverer from pain and sin, 
 and they are constantly asserting as Shelley does in the 
 lines which I have quoted from him that the departed 
 have escaped from calumny and pain. Yet how can they 
 prove this ? What incontrovertible evidence is there that 
 the consciousness does not survive the dissolution of the 
 body which itself, beyond all doubt, never could be 
 proved to have any existence independent of the minds 
 which perceived it ? There is no proof ; yet Shelley's 
 lines have as good a foundation as have affirmations of im- 
 mortality and physical resurrection. Shelley felt in regard 
 to Keats as he would have felt if he had known that Keats 
 had outsoared the shadow of our night ; and on the 
 strength of this feeling he made the assertion, and was 
 justified in doing so. In the same way, Swinburne, in 
 the closing lines of the last stanza of his poem to the 
 memory of Baudelaire, transcends his own unsatisfied 
 yearning for communion, and rises to the sublime utter- 
 
436 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 ance of a peace which he cannot express except by the 
 thought that, even with Baudelaire, all is well in death : 
 
 Content thee, howsoe'er, whose days are done j 
 There lies not any troublous thing before, 
 Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more, 
 
 For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, 
 All waters as the shore. 
 
 Perhaps I have sufficiently indicated the ideas which, 
 in my judgment, a burial service should embody, and 
 have cited a sufficient number of literary expressions of 
 them to furnish examples with which to compare the 
 various items of the existing burial rite. 
 
 After the opening rubric, which we have already 
 examined, another enjoins that the priests and clerks 
 meeting the corpse at the entrance of the churchyard and 
 going before it, either into the church or towards the 
 grave, shall say or sing : 
 
 I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord : he 
 that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live : 
 and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. 
 ST JOHN xi. 25, 26. 
 
 I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand 
 at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my 
 skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see 
 God : whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall 
 behold, and not another. JOB xix. 25, 26, 27. 
 
 We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain 
 we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord 
 hath taken away ; blessed be the Name of the Lord. 
 i TIM. vi. 7 j JOB i. 21. 
 
 As to the first of these verses, if it be interpreted as 
 its context in the Gospel of St John plainly meant it to 
 be, it can find no justification from the point of view of 
 national expediency. That context, with an appallingly 
 materialistic literalness, declares that Mary and Martha 
 had implored Christ to call forth their brother Lazarus, 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 437 
 
 who had been four days dead, out of the tomb ; and the 
 intended meaning of the verse is that Jesus, who raised 
 Lazarus, can cause our bodies to be reanimated after we 
 are dead, if only we believe in him before we die. Even 
 if this be true, it neither provides a motive to social 
 service, such as national idealism enjoins, nor does it turn 
 the thought of the mourner in the direction which 
 conscience sanctions. But the wording of this passage, 
 despite its materialistic setting, lends itself admirably to a 
 purely moral interpretation ; and universal custom, based 
 in the necessary limitations of human speech, justifies our 
 borrowing the verse and re-interpreting it in a sense in 
 which it was not originally meant. Every human being 
 who acknowledges allegiance to the ideal possesses a 
 centre of calm within where some principle, some law, 
 some idea, some impulse, presides in sovereignty and 
 majesty, which he acknowledges to be his rightful lord, 
 and which he hears declaring, " I am the resurrection and 
 the life." He is aware that if he surrenders himself to it 
 in perfect faith, though he were morally dead, yet shall 
 he live. 
 
 The first clause of the second verse has rung triumph- 
 ant down the Christian ages with a meaning the very 
 opposite of that which it first possessed, and which it was 
 intended by the writer of the book of Job to convey. 
 The Christian implication is that the speaker is conscious 
 of guilt, but is aware that another will wash his sins away. 
 In the book of Job, on the contrary, the hero of the 
 epic is vindicating his own righteousness against the 
 accusations of unjust critics, and in this opening clause 
 he declares his confidence that there is somebody alive 
 who will be sure to clear his reputation. This original 
 meaning is perhaps as little consonant with the require- 
 ments of national edification as with those of the Christian 
 
438 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 discipline ; but inasmuch as the passage has once under- 
 gone a complete reversal of meaning, there is no reason 
 why it should not now be subjected to a further re-inter- 
 pretation which will make it serve a nation's ends. One 
 who turns for help and strength not exclusively to the 
 redeeming powers within the Christian stream of tend- 
 encies but to all the powers of man and nature that make 
 for righteousness, believes that these powers are at hand 
 and able to create in him a clean heart ; they, therefore, 
 constitute for him a Redeemer, and he, equally with the 
 narrowest Christian, may find a definite and holy meaning 
 in the saying, " I know that my Redeemer liveth." 
 Indeed, his is but the Christian meaning universalised. 
 For this reason, the clause should remain in the Burial 
 Service. As to the rest of the verse, I am unable by the 
 most catholic application of the broadest method of inter- 
 pretation to find in it or read into it any valuable thought ; 
 nor can the original meaning of the writer of Job be of 
 any moral service to anyone to-day. 
 
 The two parts of the third verse are perfectly clear in 
 their original meaning, and it is one which, except for its 
 commonplace ness, is appropriate in a burial rite. It is 
 true that we bring nothing into the world and certain 
 that we carry nothing out. It is also true that the 
 inevitable order of nature includes the possession of 
 friends and the losing of friends by death, and that this 
 order is a blessed thing. 
 
 What one feels in regard to these three verses is that, 
 except for the two clauses " I am the resurrection and the 
 life " and " I know that my Redeemer Irveth," they have 
 no special literary value, contain no inspiring sentiment and 
 communicate no elevating emotion. They need, there- 
 fore, to be supplemented ; and perhaps, when a committee 
 for the revision of the Prayer Book comes to the re- 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 439 
 
 construction of the Burial Service, the merit of the 
 passages which I have quoted from Marcus Aurelius, 
 William Cullen Bryant, Matthew Arnold, Shelley and 
 Whitman will secure their adoption. 
 
 Anyone who examines Psalms 39 and 90, one or both 
 of which the rubric orders to be read immediately after 
 the opening verses, will easily discover that neither of 
 these psalms has been chosen because of its suitability as 
 a whole, but because of certain verses in each which 
 announce the transitoriness of individual existence. Now, 
 the appositeness of expressions for this idea will readily 
 be granted. Possibly, however, without one's quite 
 knowing why, a protest against it, as found in the Burial 
 Service, arises spontaneously in the judgment of the 
 unbiassed critic ; but upon reflection the protest will, I 
 believe, be found to arise from the fact that the idea of 
 the transitoriness of life is too often reiterated in the 
 service, and is almost the only thought to be found there. 
 It seems to me well that mourners should be reminded 
 of the suddenness of death, and the possibility of its 
 occurrence when least expected. But other thoughts, 
 such as I have already indicated, are of still greater value ; 
 nor can the embodiment of this sentiment justify the 
 introduction of the whole of the psalms which the rubric 
 sanctions. For instance, in a burial rite the first five 
 verses of Psalm 39 cannot be regarded as anything but 
 padding. The verses are : 
 
 I said, I will take heed to my ways : that I offend not 
 in my tongue. 
 
 I will keep my mouth as it were with a bridle : while 
 the ungodly is in my sight. 
 
 I held my tongue, and spake nothing : I kept silence, 
 yea, even from good words j but it was pain and grief 
 to me. 
 
 My heart was hot within me, and while I was thus 
 
440 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 musing the fire kindled : and at the last I spake with my 
 tongue ; 
 
 Lord, let me know mine end, and the number of my 
 days : that I may be certified how long I have to live. 
 
 Surely the first four verses have nothing to do with 
 the import of the burial, and the fifth expresses a vain 
 and foolish wish. Then follow the two stanzas which 
 undoubtedly induced the compilers of the service to 
 adopt the whole psalm : 
 
 Behold, thou hast made my days as it were a span long : 
 and mine age is even as nothing in respect of thee ; and 
 verily every man living is altogether vanity. 
 
 For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth 
 himself in vain : he heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who 
 shall gather them. 
 
 In these two verses one may overlook the evident 
 exaggeration in the assertion that " every man living is 
 altogether vanity/' on the ground of poetic licence ; and 
 yet a danger lurks in it lest the mourner, already cast 
 down, be utterly discouraged, and lest the springs to 
 action, instead of being strengthened, be still further 
 relaxed. The remainder of the psalm is likewise, for this 
 rite, either purely padding or false philosophy of life : 
 
 And now, Lord, what is my hope ? truly my hope is 
 even in thee. 
 
 Deliver me from all mine offences : and make me not 
 a rebuke unto the foolish. 
 
 I became dumb, and opened not my mouth : for it was 
 thy doing. 
 
 Take thy plague away from me : I am even consumed 
 by means of thy heavy hand. 
 
 When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin, thou 
 makest his beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth 
 fretting a garment : every man therefore is but vanity. 
 
 Hear my prayer, O Lord, and with thine ears consider 
 my calling : hold not thy peace at my tears. 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 441 
 
 For I am a stranger with thee : and a sojourner, as all 
 my fathers were. 
 
 O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength : 
 before I go hence, and be no more seen. 
 
 In criticism upon the closing thought of this psalm, 
 Professor Wellhausen says : " The psalmist's resignation 
 borders on despair. It is remarkable how little he desires 
 from JHVH. The present is cheerless ; of a future life 
 there is no thought." It is possible that the revisers of 
 the Prayer Book, recognising the original sentiment of 
 the psalm, will be the more ready to omit it from the 
 Burial Service ; and it is quite certain that those whose 
 chief motive will be the education and edification of the 
 people of the nation will reject it because of the unblushing 
 egoism of the sentiment of the psalmist, who never once 
 manifests any concern beyond his own personal affairs. 
 
 Psalm 90 will upon investigation be found still more 
 unsuitable in a burial rite than Psalm 39. It represents 
 the Jewish nation as speaking. I will not take space to 
 insert it here, but instead will quote Wellhausen's criticism. 
 He says : 
 
 This psalm was not written by Moses. He could not 
 look back, as its writer does, on a long unhappy history of 
 his people. From the conclusion (vv. 1317) it is 
 clear that the community is speaking. Because heavy 
 misfortune has been long weighing it down, and JHVH 
 does not manifest his countenance or his hand, the people 
 feel that his wrath rests upon them. But the fortunes of 
 men in general are blended with the lot that history 
 assigns to the community. And the wrath of God, which 
 his people feel, is not a mere transient and extraordinary 
 misfortune afrecting Israel alone ; it is the abiding and 
 inevitable misery of human life. 
 
 Now, this is all very well, but who, following Wellhausen's 
 analysis, can help asking himself what possible bearing 
 
442 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 Psalm 90 has, what message of consolation or strength, to 
 mourners at the open grave of a friend ? 
 
 It is possible that the Old Testament contains no more 
 suitable passages for incorporation in a burial rite than 
 Psalms 39 and 90 ; but it would be perfectly easy to com- 
 pile from various sources, in the same manner in which 
 the makers of the Prayer Book have thrown together 
 different passages of the Bible into a single verse in the 
 opening of the Burial Service, and make a harmonious 
 and edifying reading. Why not construct some such 
 psalm on the transitoriness of life as this, which I have 
 arranged from Jeremy Taylor, Thomas a Kempis, the 
 Bible and Shakespeare ? 
 
 I have seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood : 
 
 And, at first, it was fair as the morning, 
 
 And full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece ; 
 
 But when a ruder breath had dismantled its too youthful 
 
 and unripe retirements, 
 It began to put on darkness, 
 And to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly 
 
 age; 
 
 It bowed its head and broke its stalk ; 
 And at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its 
 
 beauty, 
 
 It fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces. 
 The same is the portion of every man and of every woman. 
 For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the 
 
 flower of grass. 
 
 The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away. 
 Man born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is 
 
 full of misery. 
 
 He cometh up and is cut down like a flower ; 
 He fleeth, and never continueth in one stay. 
 The days of man's age are threescore and ten ; 
 And though men be so strong that they come to fourscore 
 
 years, 
 
 Yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow, 
 So soon passeth it away and we are gone. 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 443 
 
 Yet a few days, and thee the all-beholding sun shall see 
 
 no more in all his course ; 
 Nor yet in the cold ground, where thy pale form was laid 
 
 with many tears, nor in the embrace of ocean, shall 
 
 exist thine image. 
 
 And who shall remember thee when thou art dead ? 
 Death is the end of all, and man's life suddenly passeth 
 
 away like a shadow. 
 
 In the foregoing, however, there is little more than a 
 calm recognition of the inevitableness, the suddenness 
 and the universality of death. To be reminded of these 
 attributes does without doubt induce strength and dis- 
 interestedness of aim ; but it ought to lead up to more 
 heroic sentiments. If, therefore, the foregoing were to 
 replace Psalm 39, the following might be introduced in 
 place of Psalm 90 : 
 
 Some have been paying their vows, and giving thanks for 
 
 a prosperous return to their house, 
 And the roof hath descended upon their heads, 
 And turned their loud religion into the deeper silence of 
 
 the grave. 
 
 How often dost thou hear this report : 
 Such a man is slain, another man is drowned j 
 This man died eating and that man playing ; one perished 
 
 by fire, another by the sword ; 
 
 Another by the plague ; another was slain by thieves ? 
 If at any time thou hast seen another man die, 
 Make account that thou also must pass the same way. 
 If it be not now, then it will come : 
 The readiness is all. 
 
 And this, being short, might be followed by Walt 
 Whitman's magnificent chant : 
 
 O sane and sacred death ! 
 
 The sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky 
 
 are fitting, 
 
 And life, and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night ; 
 The night in silence under many a star, 
 
444 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 The ocean shore, and the husky whispering wave whose 
 
 voice I know, 
 And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veiled 
 
 Death, 
 And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. 
 
 Come, lovely and soothing Death : 
 
 Undulate round the world, serenely arriving : arriving 
 
 In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 
 
 Sooner or later : delicate Death ! 
 
 Dark Mother, always gliding near with soft feet, 
 Have none chanted for thee a song of fullest welcome ? 
 Then I chant it for thee : I glorify thee above all : 
 I bring thee a song, that, when thou must indeed come, 
 come unfalteringly. 
 
 The next item of the Burial Service is the Lesson, 
 taken from the ifth chapter of the First Epistle to the 
 Corinthians. Before I give my criticism, it may be well 
 to state that its inappropriateness is so glaring as not to 
 have escaped the outspoken censure of many devout 
 Churchmen. Indeed, by a canon of the year 1890 the 
 Scottish Episcopal Church ordained that, with the sanction 
 of the Bishop, another lesson may be substituted for this. 
 cc In the diocese of Edinburgh," says Bishop Dowden, in 
 his work on The Prayer Book in its Literary and Liturgical 
 Aspects^ " permission under this provision has been given 
 to use (i) i Thess. iv. 13 to the end of the chapter, or 
 (2) Revelation viii. 9 to the end of the chapter. Under the 
 same provision, the use of St Mark x. 13 to the end of 
 verse 1 6 has been sanctioned permissively on the occasion 
 of the burial of an infant or little child." Here we find a 
 historical practice illustrating several principles which I have 
 already advocated. The peculiar circumstance of the death 
 of a child has been felt by the Scottish Church to justify 
 special items in the Burial Service, thus recognising the dis- 
 tinction, which I have urged as radical, between normal and 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 445 
 
 premature death. Also the policy of alternatives is illus- 
 trated ; and, indeed, not only one but two alternatives 
 have been sanctioned, while the original lesson still 
 remains at the option of those who prefer it. Still more 
 interesting and encouraging is it to note that the unmis- 
 takable motive for these changes is a more delicate and 
 tender deference for the feelings of the mourners and for 
 the character and circumstance of the dead. 
 
 Another passage of Bishop Dowden's book overtly 
 expresses these motives : he says, for instance, in reference 
 to the " obscure verse " of the present lesson, " Else what 
 shall they do which are baptised for the dead ? " and 
 concerning "the recondite discussion and apologetic 
 argument in verses 36-41," that it may be seriously 
 questioned whether the introduction of this matter " is 
 quite appropriate to the sorrow of hearts bereaved." He 
 further adds, "The objection to our present lesson is not 
 that it is too long, but that much of it is somewhat out of 
 harmony with the occasion. It is within the experience 
 of not a few that there is something inappropriate and 
 harsh to those who really mourn, in the introduction, at 
 the solemn hour of the burial of some loved one, of such 
 a verse as verse 39." The verse to which the Bishop 
 alludes is this : " All flesh is not the same flesh ; but 
 there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, 
 another of fishes, and another of birds." Yet to many 
 and perhaps an increasing number of those who have 
 thought most on the problems of life and death, and have 
 sympathised most widely and deeply this is perhaps one 
 of the least offensive verses in the whole of the lesson. 
 What could be more unbecoming, for instance, than that 
 the Burial Service should contain a prophecy made two 
 thousand years ago, unmistakably in reference to some- 
 thing that was expected to happen in the very generation 
 
446 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 in which St Paul lived, and yet which everybody perfectly 
 well knows failed to take place ? What consolation of 
 confident trust in the sincerity and wisdom of an 
 authorised religion can the mourner feel when he hears 
 its officials read a prophecy which is known to have been 
 false ? The lesson contains this statement of St Paul's : 
 " We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a 
 moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump (for 
 the trumpet shall sound), and the dead shall be raised 
 incorruptible, and we shall be changed." Yet they have 
 all slept, in the sense in which the Apostle prophesied 
 they would not, and none of them were changed in the 
 twinkling of an eye ; and that last trump, which was to 
 raise the dead, never sounded. In reference to the passage 
 about being baptised for the dead, the chief objection to it 
 is not, as Bishop Dowden suavely suggests, its obscurity ; 
 for in fact it is not in the least obscure ; the objection to 
 it is that it exposes in the fullest light what to us seems a 
 superstitious and altogether an unpleasant practice of the 
 early Church. There was a time when many inanimate 
 objects were baptised; in accord with this general super- 
 stition it was regarded as possible to baptise by proxy, 
 and thus it came about that sometimes a friend sub- 
 mitted to the rite on behalf of a dead person. The 
 orthodox judgment of the Church has dropped this 
 practice, and yet the old-fashioned presupposition that 
 everything the Bible says is of value was still so prevalent 
 in 1662 in England as to permit the retention of this 
 record of superstition. 
 
 Probably in the whole Bible no one passage could be 
 found so full of false prophecy, of false science and forced 
 logic, of references to archaic custom, of controversial 
 theology and of ethical teaching unworthy of the Church, 
 as are condensed into this lesson selected to soothe human 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 447 
 
 hearts at the moment of their intensest sorrow. It is false 
 science and forced logic it is exploded biology and in- 
 consequential reasoning to say that a seed which one sows 
 is not quickened except it die, and that therefore a man must 
 die in order to be quickened into a higher life. It was 
 excusable in Paul, but in the face of modern biology it is not 
 excusable (because it is not honest) in the Church, to reason 
 by an analogy that presupposes as fact what is known to be 
 fanciful. I have said the passage contains controversial 
 theology ; but it would have been safe even to say that 
 it contains theology which is contrary to the fundamental 
 orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. St Paul says, "When 
 all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son 
 also himself be subject unto him that put all things under 
 him, that God may be all in all." How does this square 
 with the co-equality and co-eternity of the Son ? 
 
 Nor can any possible subtlety of exposition hide from 
 our conscience the moral scepticism involved in St Paul's 
 petulant proposal, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
 we die." His reasoning presupposes that there could be 
 no motive to hold him back from self-indulgence except 
 his belief in personal immortality. He might have been 
 justified in reasoning that his ardent propaganda was in 
 vain if the dead rise not ; he might have been justified in 
 saying, " Let us stop preaching the doctrine of resurrec- 
 tion if there be no such thing" ; but altogether reprehensible 
 is his positive injunction that, if such be the case, we 
 should turn to a life of selfish pleasure. 
 
 The passages which I have already cited from the Burial 
 Lesson are enough to prove its inappropriateness, although 
 it contains many more sentences scarcely less objectionable. 
 Indeed, the only part which might well commend itself to 
 everyone who accepts death as a benignant fact is wholly 
 outside of Paul's pedantic learning and logic, and yet it is 
 
448 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 the part in order to justify which he introduces his learn- 
 ing and logic. His argumentation all leads up to what 
 needed no introduction or defence whatever namely, the 
 statement that " Death is swallowed up in victory," and 
 the glorious acclamation, " O Death, where is thy sting ? 
 O Grave, where is thy victory ? The sting of death is 
 sin, and the strength of sin is the law." It might be well, 
 therefore, that, when the Church of England follows that 
 of Scotland by proposing alternatives to this lesson, she 
 should also grant permission to use only such parts of the 
 existing lesson as shall seem fit to the officiating clergyman 
 or his bishop. 
 
 If alternatives to the present Burial Lesson are to be 
 adopted, what shall they be ? I shall not attempt to 
 suggest other passages from the Bible. It might be well, 
 however, in passing, to point out that i Thessalonians, 
 chapter iv., from the i3th verse to the end of the chapter, 
 which the Scottish Church sanctions, contains a passage 
 which cannot fail to give deep moral offence to those who 
 count intellectual honesty an essential feature in true 
 religion ; for, like the one in Paul, the passage declares 
 that " We which are alive and remain unto the coming of 
 the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep ; for 
 the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, 
 with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of 
 God : and the dead in Christ shall rise first : then we 
 which are alive and remain shall be caught up together 
 with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air." 
 Let it here be noted that objection to this passage need 
 not arise from disbelief in miracles in the least, but wholly 
 from the painful truth that this hope of the writer turned 
 out in the event to be erroneous, and it is not fair nor 
 kind to lacerate the hearts of mourners by reference to 
 the most pathetic of all religious illusions. The only 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 449 
 
 possibility that this quotation from Thessalonians will not 
 produce such an effect would be that it should fail to have 
 any meaning whatever to the listener. But if that were 
 the case, why should it be read ? It must further be 
 remembered that here it is not simply the sceptic whose 
 feelings would be lacerated ; on the contrary, he least of 
 all would suffer. It is the devout believer in the Bible 
 and in the doctrines of the Church whose anguish must be 
 most acute if he be intelligent enough to have learned 
 as now all the better critics are pointing out that the first 
 Christians believed that the triumphant coming of their 
 Lord was to be in their own day and generation. 
 
 More germane to the purpose of this book than the 
 citing of suitable alternative lessons from the Bible is 
 the consideration of passages from other literature. But 
 even of these my consideration must be altogether brief. 
 Indeed, I would only call attention to two passages in 
 Plato, which could not fail, if incorporated into the burial 
 rite, to serve in the highest degree the end for which any 
 national liturgy should be established. Take the passage 
 in the Apology^ beginning, " Not much time will be 
 gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name which 
 you will get from the detractors of the city, who will say 
 that you killed Socrates, a wise man " ; and ending, " I 
 suppose that these things may be regarded as fated, and 
 I think that they are well." Here Socrates is represented 
 as teaching that there are worse calamities which may befall 
 a man than death, and therefore more terrible woes which 
 might prostrate a man's friends than that of bereavement 
 at his death ; for the theme is that unrighteous life is 
 more to be shunned than righteous death. It is a 
 thought which instantly awakens moral wonder and a 
 sense of the dignity of the human spirit and the meaning 
 
 of duty. It tends to dry the tears by drawing the 
 
 29 
 
450 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 emotions into thought for others, for the living, and 
 towards to-morrow's opportunity of service. Plato's 
 object is to diminish the fear of death and to intensify 
 the fear of wrong-doing ; and this is exactly what all 
 patriotic teachers and wise statesmen must desire to see 
 accomplished. Still more consoling and edifying is the 
 death-scene in the Ph<edo. Here we have presented to us 
 a picture of the way a man ought to die. 
 
 Immediately following the Burial Lesson is a rubric 
 which enjoins that the priest shall say or the priest and 
 clerks shall sing : 
 
 Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to 
 live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut 
 down, like a flower j he fleeth as it were a shadow, and 
 never continueth in one stay. 
 
 In the midst of life we are in death : of whom may we 
 seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins 
 art justly displeased ? 
 
 Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O 
 holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the 
 bitter pains of eternal death. 
 
 Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts ; shut 
 not thy merciful ears to our prayer ; but spare us, Lord 
 most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful 
 Saviour, thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at 
 our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee. 
 
 The first two verses here are but a reiteration of the idea 
 that life is transitory and our continuance not in our 
 own hands. In the third and fourth verses, with their 
 intense ejaculations of names and epithets for God, and 
 in the prayer to be delivered from the bitter pains of 
 eternal death and prevented at our last hour from falling 
 from God, there is preserved to us an agony and a con- 
 ception of the future life which have grown rarer and 
 rarer as the nations have evolved from under the ideas 
 that dominated and darkened the tenth and eleventh 
 
THE BURIAL SERVICE 451 
 
 centuries. Probably nothing but a plebiscite made among 
 the mourners of our day who have listened to the Burial 
 Service of the Church could prove or disprove the 
 correctness of my impression that for the great majority 
 of devout Christians to-day these cries from a bygone 
 age sound like "a dying echo from a falling wall." 
 But I am ready to risk the assertion, although it is 
 neither to be proved nor disproved ; so strong is my 
 belief that the tendency of my sentiment is due to 
 currents within the Church itself. 
 
 The next item in the service is the declaration to be 
 said by the priest while earth is being cast upon the body. 
 There is no occasion to quote or criticise it, as its essential 
 point is the assertion of the hope of resurrection, with 
 which I have already dealt in various aspects. The next 
 following item (to be said or sung) is one which, although 
 alternatives might be offered, should in my judgment be 
 retained, because besides its literal and original significance 
 it is capable of re-interpretation : " I heard a voice from 
 heaven, saying unto me. Write, From henceforth blessed 
 are the dead which die in the Lord : even so saith the 
 Spirit ; for they rest from their labours." This may be 
 literal fact ; but it is also undeniably beautiful poetry, and 
 everyone who has made his peace with death feels in it 
 an essential truth that is independent of the imagery. 
 The supplication to be uttered by the priest after the 
 Lord's Prayer needs no special comment ; but it may 
 not be out of taste, in order to show the need of alter- 
 natives, to call attention to the sentence, " We give thee 
 hearty thanks, for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this 
 our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world," and 
 to remind my reader of the painful incongruity in the 
 practice of the Church, in that it pronounces this statement 
 over the dead bodies of persons who have been put to 
 
452 NATIONAL IDEALISM 
 
 death by the law of the land. Yet, until an alternative is 
 allowable, this incongruity will continue. 
 
 In the closing collect, no new sentiments are introduced 
 except that contained in the admirable words, " We meekly 
 beseech thee, O Father, to raise us from the death of sin 
 unto the life of righteousness." Here, happily, we find 
 the Church rising from a literal acceptation of the doctrine 
 of personal immortality and physical resurrection, and 
 using the idea of resurrection as a symbol of ethical 
 regeneration. Such a metamorphosis of the doctrines of 
 the Church needs to be developed, in order to transform 
 the whole Book of Common Prayer in accordance with 
 the new social vision of the Spirit of Man. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absolution, the, 228. (Cf. For- 
 giveness of sins.) 
 
 Accession Service, the, and the 
 Lord's Prayer, 70. 
 
 Adler, Professor Felix, cited, 199. 
 
 " Adonais," Shelley's, 258, 423. 
 
 Adult baptism, 305, 306. (Cf. 
 also Baptism.) 
 
 Adultery, a legal term, 57. 
 
 and extra-conjugal indulgence, 
 
 57- 
 
 unfaithfulness and excess, 57. 
 Advancement of Learning, Bacon's, 
 
 278, 280. 
 Advent, the season of, and its 
 
 teaching, 230. 
 Agapae, the, 351, 362. (Cf. 
 
 Love-feast, Eucharist.) 
 Age limit for matrimony, 388. 
 Agnostic's Apology, Stephen's, 414. 
 Agnosticism, Spencerian, 248. 
 Alcoholic drinking, excess in, 56. 
 America, the Episcopal Church 
 
 of, and the Marriage 
 
 Service, 397. 
 
 Anglican Church, the, and ex- 
 orcism, 2 et seq. 
 and Modernism, 156. 
 and the Book of Common 
 
 Prayer, 2 et seq. (Cf. 
 
 Prayer Book.) 
 importance attached to the 
 
 Decalogue by, i, 4. 
 Burial Service compared with 
 
 that of the Church of 
 
 Rome, 2. 
 
 Anglican Church: creeds, 152; 
 
 dogma, 154. 
 
 Tractarian Movement in, 175. 
 (Cf. Church of England.) 
 Anglican reunion with Rome 
 desired by Newman, 175. 
 Anglicanism and social demo- 
 cracy, 3. 
 
 three trends of, 2 et seq. 
 Anthropomorphism, no et seq. 
 Apology, Plato's, 449. 
 Apostles' Creed, 157, 170. 
 Areopagitica, Milton's, 280. 
 Arnold, Matthew, and the Bible, 
 
 246, 274, 277, 278. 
 
 cited, 21, 27, 114, 209, 264. 
 
 Articles of Religion, the, 174 
 
 et seq. 
 
 Newman and, 175. 
 purpose of, 175, 178, 179. 
 when first established authori- 
 tatively, 175. 
 
 Association, the law of, 78. 
 Astronomy,, Kant and, 123. 
 "At the Worst," Zangwill's, 217. 
 Athanasian Creed, the, 144 et 
 
 seq. 
 and the Resurrection, 146, 147 
 
 et seq. 
 
 and the Virgin Birth, 146. 
 suggested revisions of, 147 et 
 
 seq. 
 the Church's weapon against 
 
 heresy, 158. 
 
 the damnatory clauses, 149, 
 150. 152- 
 
 453 
 
454 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Athanasian Creed : the word 
 
 "Father," 146. 
 the word "Person," 162, 169. 
 Atheism, 94. 
 "Ave atque Vale," Swinburne's, 
 
 428. 
 
 Babylonian exile, the, 244. 
 Bacon, Francis, cited, 278, 280, 
 
 426. 
 
 Balfour, Mr A. J., and Protec- 
 tion, 151. 
 Banns of marriage, inadequacy 
 
 of, 402, 403. 
 
 Baptism, adult, 305, 306. 
 among the Jews, 305. 
 an act of initiation, 295, 296. 
 and the Catechism, 330. 
 and the Lord's Prayer, 70. 
 by immersion, 297, 299, 300. 
 controversy as to infant or 
 
 adult, 305. 
 controversy as to sprinkling or 
 
 immersion, 305. 
 efficacy of, 295. 
 for the dead, 445-446. 
 godparents, 316, 319. 
 infant, 291, 305, 308. 
 naming the child, 315. 
 prefigurements of, 302, 304. 
 rubric concerning, 291. 
 sign of the cross in, 292. 
 sponsors in, 4, 316, 319. 
 water the arbitrary symbol, 
 
 294. 
 Baptismal service : exhortation as 
 
 to sermons, 318. 
 incongruity of the opening 
 
 prayer, 302-305. 
 the exhortation, 301. 
 Baptist denomination lacks a 
 form of dedicating child- 
 ren, 306. 
 Baptists, the, and adult baptism, 
 
 305, 306, 308, 309. 
 Baudelaire, Charles, 428. 
 Benediction, the, 204 et seq. 
 
 Benediction, the, a triple blessing, 
 
 205, 206. 
 
 its author, 204, 205. 
 logic of, 205. 
 suggested alternatives, 209- 
 
 217. 
 
 Bentham, Jeremy, 408. 
 " Better Part, The," 264. 
 Bible, the, and the Higher Criti- 
 cism, 245, 285, 287, 288. 
 ethics of, 276. 
 Matthew Arnold's dictum on, 
 
 274, 277, 278. 
 
 Old and New Testaments, 279. 
 Polychrome, 245, 246. 
 psychology and sociology of, 
 
 275 et seq. 
 
 supreme in literature, 275. 
 translation into English, 287. 
 Bishops, consecration of, and 
 
 the Lord's Prayer, 70. 
 jurisdiction of foreign, 3. 
 Book of Common Prayer, the, i 
 
 et seq. 
 
 revision of, 178. 
 (Cf. Prayer Book.) 
 Bravery, intellectual, 63. 
 Browning, Robert, cited, 216, 
 
 434, 435- 
 Bryant, William Cullen, cited, 
 
 43i- 
 Burial Office, the, and the Lord's 
 
 Prayer, 70. 
 Burial Service, the, 2, 407 et seq. 
 
 alternatives for the Lesson 
 sanctioned by the Scottish 
 Episcopal Church, 444, 
 448. 
 
 an ideal, 415 et seq. 
 
 and the doctrine of the resur- 
 rection, 451, 452. 
 
 compared with that of Roman 
 Church, 2. 
 
 defects in, 219, 416. 
 
 inappropriateness of, 444 et seq. 
 
 incongruity of the final suppli- 
 cation, 451. 
 
INDEX 
 
 455 
 
 Burial Service : special Lesson 
 
 sanctioned by Scottish 
 
 Episcopal Church for 
 
 children, 444. 
 suggested psalms, 442-443. 
 suggestions for revision of, 412 
 
 et seq. 
 
 the closing collect, 452. 
 the committal, 451. 
 the final supplication, incon- 
 
 gruity of, 451. 
 the Lesson, 444. 
 the opening rubric, 407. 
 the Psalms, 439-441. 
 Burke, Edmund, and his Letters, 
 
 280. 
 Thoughts on the Present Dis- 
 
 contents, 280. 
 
 Calvin on the eucharistic sacri- 
 
 fice, 347. 
 
 Cana, the wedding feast at, 396. 
 Carpenter, Mr Edward, cited, 
 
 263. 
 
 Catechism, the, 323 et seq. 
 and redemption, 324. 
 and the Lord's Prayer, 328- 
 
 329- 
 
 and the sacraments, 329-330. 
 and the Ten Commandments, 
 
 Celibates, 55. 
 
 Chamberlain, Mr Joseph, and 
 
 Protection, 151. 
 Charles V. and the Reformation, 
 
 178. 
 Children, and the Lord's Prayer, 
 
 129 et seq. 
 burial of, 444. 
 
 debarred from joining the 
 Baptist denomination, 
 306. 
 sacrament of presentation of, 
 
 310. 
 
 form of service, 310-315. 
 the procreation of, 397-398. 
 Christ, death of, 420. 
 
 Christening (cf. Baptism). 
 Christian religion, its two 
 
 doctrines, 218. 
 Chrysostom, St, the prayer of, 
 
 229. 
 Church of England, the : 
 
 and dogma, 154. 
 
 and Modernism, 156. 
 
 Benediction, 204 et seq. 
 
 Catechism, the, 323 et seq. 
 
 Collects of, 229 et seq. 
 
 Creeds of, 144, 146, 157, 170, 
 
 173- 
 importance of the Decalogue 
 
 in, i, 4. 
 in reality an ethical society, 
 
 194. 
 
 Lectionary of, 272 et seq. 
 Lord's Prayer, 70 et seq. 
 opening sentences, 194. 
 prayers, 231 et seq. 
 Psalms, 240. 
 public offices : 
 
 Baptism, 70, 291, 295, 296, 
 
 2 97 299, 300, 305, 308. 
 Burial Service, 2, 70, 407 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 Confirmation, 70, 306. 
 Holy Communion, 3, 345 
 
 et seq. 
 
 Litany, 220 et seq. 
 Marriage Ceremony, 375 et 
 
 seq. 
 Morning and Evening Prayer, 
 
 225. 
 
 ritual of, 291, 355. 
 Ten Commandments, the, i et 
 
 ^q., 34, 39> 4*, 5 1 . 54, 
 56, 59, 62, 65, 68. 
 
 the first ethical society, 373. 
 
 Thirty-nine Articles of, 174. 
 
 Tractarian Movement in the, 
 
 175- 
 
 (Cf. Anglican Church.) 
 Church of Rome : 
 
 and Protestants, cleavage be- 
 tween, 178. 
 
45 6 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Church of Rome : images, 36. 
 
 Latin tongue, use of, 292. 
 
 Mass, the, 347. 
 
 Missal and Breviary, the, i et 
 seq. 
 
 transubstantiation, 346. 
 Church universal, the, 201, 202. 
 Churching of Women, and the 
 
 Lord's Prayer, 70. 
 Clifford, Professor, cited, 197. 
 dough's hymn of fellow-help, 
 
 340. 
 Clubs, a reason of their success, 
 
 360. 
 
 Colenso, Bishop, excommuni- 
 cation of, 410. 
 Coleridge, S. T., cited, 199. 
 Collects, the, 229 et seq. 
 Commandments, the : 
 first, i et seq., 68. 
 second, 34 et seq., 68. 
 third, 39 et seq., 68. 
 fourth, 9, 41 et seq., 69. 
 fifth, 51 et seq., 69. 
 sixth, 54 et seq., 69. 
 seventh, 56 et seq., 69. 
 eighth, 59 et seq., 69. 
 ninth, 62 et seq., 69. 
 tenth, 65 et seq., 69. 
 compared with the Lord's 
 
 Prayer, 125 et seq. 
 deficiency of the seventh com- 
 mandment, 57-59. 
 different renderings of the 
 fourth commandment, 9 
 et seq. 
 of the tenth commandment, 
 
 10 et seq. 
 
 tenth commandment, suggested 
 
 incorporation of its first 
 
 injunction with seventh 
 
 commandment, 58, 59,65. 
 
 (Cf. Decalogue.) 
 
 Commination Service, the, and 
 
 the Lord's Prayer, 70. 
 Communion,asunderstood among 
 Roman Catholics, 348. 
 
 Communion, idealistic, 361. 
 
 in both kinds insisted on by 
 Church of England, 3. 
 
 in one kind, 347. 
 
 of Saints, 172. 
 
 Communion Service, the, 3, 345 
 et seq. 
 
 a meal in common, 362-364. 
 
 and the Lord's Prayer, 70, 371. 
 
 ethical efficacy of, 373. 
 
 now a mock-meal, 350-352. 
 
 originally an actual supper, 
 
 35- 
 
 real presence, 346. 
 St Paul's interpretation of the 
 
 Eucharist, 354, 357. 
 separation between Eucharist 
 
 and Love-feast, 351. 
 supernaturalist idea of, 347. 
 the Decalogue in, i, 34, 39, 41, 
 
 51.54, 5 6 > 59, 62, 65,68, 
 
 69. 
 
 the ethical idea of, 349. 
 the long exhortation, 367-368. 
 the preliminary invitation, 369. 
 the reality symbolised, 352. 
 the Reformers and, 347. 
 the rite of renewal of loyalty, 
 
 353- 
 the Roman Catholic belief 
 
 concerning, 347. 
 transubstantiation, 346. 
 Confession of frailty, 202. 
 Confessions, doctrinal (cf. 
 
 Creeds). 
 
 of hope and duty, 181 et seq. 
 Confirmation, and the Lord's 
 
 Prayer, 70. 
 at the time of the Reformation, 
 
 308. 
 pre-Reformation practice of, 
 
 306. 
 
 the essential part of the baptis- 
 mal rite, 306. 
 the Preface and a confused 
 
 rubric, 307, 308. 
 the rite of, 306-308. 
 
INDEX 
 
 457 
 
 Conjugal love, 399. 
 
 Corinthian Church, St Paul's 
 rebuke to, 362. 
 
 Courage, intellectual, homily for, 
 210. 
 
 Covetousness and the tenth com- 
 mandment, 10, II. 
 
 Cranmer, Archbishop, 177, 178. 
 
 Creed, the Athanasian, 144 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 and the Virgin Birth, 146. 
 Apostles', 157, 170. 
 Nicene, 157, 173. 
 
 Creeds, re-statement of, de- 
 manded by Anglicans, 38. 
 the, as expressions of human- 
 istic idealism, 144. 
 
 Cremation, Mr Herbert Spencer 
 and, 414. 
 
 Critique of Pure Reason, Kant's, 
 
 254- 
 
 Croatia, marriage rites in, 389. 
 Cross, the sign of the, in baptism, 
 
 292. 
 Cyprian on the Lord's Prayer, 70. 
 
 Damnatory clauses of the Athan- 
 asian Creed, the, 149, 150, 
 152. 
 Deacons, the ordering of, and 
 
 the Lord's Prayer, 70. 
 Dead, baptism for the, 445-446. 
 prayers for the, 2. 
 resurrection of the, 146, 147- 
 149, 230, 433, 434, 437- 
 ( Cf. Immortality, Life 
 after death.) 
 Death, Bacon on, 426. 
 Marcus Aurelius on, 429. 
 Mr Quin's hymn on, 419. 
 of Jesus Christ, 420. 
 penalty, offences formerly 
 
 punishable by, 408. 
 violent and unnatural, 408, 
 
 425-. 
 
 Walt Whitman on, 443-444. 
 Decalogue, the, i et seq. 
 
 Decalogue, the: amended form of 
 
 the third commandment, 
 
 41, 68. 
 an appeal to the historic sense 
 
 of the Jewish community, 
 
 1 8. 
 an appeal to individual moral 
 
 judgment, 19. 
 analogous to the Lord's 
 
 Prayer, 125 et seq. 
 and national idealism, 16 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 and Sabbath observance, 9. 
 and the Catechism, 325-328. 
 and the evolution of Jewish 
 
 religion, 6 et seq. 
 and the responses of the laity, 
 
 1 3 et seq. 
 Anglican version of, obsolete 
 
 before Christ, 8. 
 as a summary of ethical 
 
 discipline, 15. 
 Deuteronomic form, 8. 
 division of, into two groups, 
 
 20. 
 
 earliest form of, 6. 
 the eighth commandment, 
 
 emendation of, 62, 69. 
 the eighth commandment 
 
 defective and inefficient, 
 
 59- 
 
 the ethical view of, 5 et seq. 
 
 the ethical ideal of the sixth 
 commandment, 56, 69. 
 
 the fifth commandment a for- 
 ward-gazing precept, 52, 
 
 53- 
 
 the fifth commandment as 
 amended, 53, 69. 
 
 the first commandment, sub- 
 division of, 24 et seq. 
 
 inefficiency of the seventh 
 commandment, 57, 58, 59. 
 
 objections to the imperative 
 mood, 15 et seq. 
 
 obsolete terms in the fourth 
 commandment, 46. 
 
458 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Decalogue, suggested revision of, 
 
 34, 38, 41,5^53. 54, 56, 
 59, 62, 64, 65, 68, 69. 
 
 the Lord's Prayer compared 
 with the, 125 et seq. 
 
 the meaning of the first com- 
 mandment, 34, 68. 
 
 the ninth commandment, pro- 
 posed addition to, 64, 
 69. 
 
 the second commandment, 
 suggested emendation of, 
 37, 38, 68. 
 
 the seventh commandment as 
 amended, 59, 69. 
 
 the substitution of the Deutero- 
 nomic form an ethical 
 gain, 9, 10 et seq. 
 
 the tenth commandment, sug- 
 gested amendment of, 58, 
 65, 69. 
 
 the three versions of, 6, 8. 
 
 their ceremonial setting, 13, 
 
 14. 
 
 Deuteronomic Decalogue pre- 
 ferred to the Exodic, 8, 9, 
 
 10, II, 12. 
 
 Sabbath, the, 43. 
 
 Deuteronomy, the writers of, and 
 the Decalogue, 8, 17. 
 
 Dissenters, causes of their stag- 
 nation, 152. (Cf. Non- 
 conformists.) 
 
 "Divinity, The," Matthew 
 Arnold's, 21, 264, 265. 
 
 Dogma and the Church, 154. 
 
 Dowden, Bishop, cited, 444, 
 
 445- 
 
 Dream of John Ball, William 
 Morris's, 124. 
 
 Dreams and their significance, 
 284. 
 
 Drunkenness and the sixth com- 
 mandment, 56. 
 
 Duty as supreme deity of the 
 
 human will, 197 et seq 
 confessions of, 181 et seq. 
 
 Duty, conjugal, sphere of, 391. 
 
 Ecce Homo, Seeley's, 208, 312- 
 
 3i3, 335, 363-364- 
 Ecclesiastical law, Henry VIII. 
 
 orders re-statement and 
 
 re-formulation of, 177. 
 Edward VI. and the revision of 
 
 Prayer Book, 177. 
 Eliot, George, cited, 91, 125, 209, 
 
 266, 332, 337. 
 Emerson, R. W., cited, 114, 124, 
 
 197, 198, 200, 210, 214, 
 
 SH- 
 OD the laws of nature, 255. 
 Encyclop&dia Biblica, Professor 
 Schmidt's article on " The 
 Son of Man," 138. 
 the, cited, 251. 
 England the religious educator 
 
 of her people, 5. 
 Church of (cf. Anglican 
 Church and Church of 
 England). 
 English history compared with 
 
 Jewish, 282. 
 
 literature and the ethical move- 
 ment, 290. 
 
 as Holy Scripture, 279. 
 lyrics, suggested introduction 
 of, into Divine Service, 
 
 253. 
 morals in the sixteenth century, 
 
 n. 
 poetry and the Psalter, 240 
 
 et seq. 
 translation of the Bible into, 
 
 287. 
 workmen, their inability to 
 
 organise successfully, 357. 
 Established Church (cf. Church 
 
 of England). 
 Ethical Church : a suggested 
 
 Burial Office, 418 et 
 
 seq. 
 and self-examination, duty 
 
 of, 338. 
 
INDEX 
 
 459 
 
 Ethical Church and tests, 335. 
 confessions of hope and duty, 
 
 181 et seq. 
 hymnology : Clough's hymn 
 
 of fellow-help, 340. 
 initiation ceremony, 316, 
 
 338 et seq. 
 
 instruction forinitiation,335. 
 meals in common, 365. 
 sacrament of presentation of 
 
 children, 310. 
 services, form of, 310-315. 
 suggested homily on the dis- 
 ciplines of, 342-344. 
 suggested ritualistic act of 
 
 admission, 331. 
 discipline, the commandments 
 
 a summary of, 15. 
 faith, statements of, 189, 190. 
 movement of the seventh 
 
 century B.C., the, 12. 
 societies, 372. 
 
 and the doctrine of the resur- 
 rection, 319. 
 and the reception of young 
 
 children, 310. 
 hymnology of, 265, 340. 
 naming the child in the 
 
 initiation ceremony, 316. 
 need of ritual in, 310, 316, 
 
 320. 
 
 their chief work, 208. 
 their view of the Decalogue, 
 
 5 et seq. 
 society, the Church the first, 
 
 373- 
 
 the West London, 265. 
 view of the Communion Ser- 
 vice, 349. 
 
 Eucharist, the, and the Love- 
 feast, separation between, 
 
 35 J > 3 62 - 
 Calvin on, 347. 
 differences between Anglicans 
 
 and Romans, 3 et seq. 
 ethical utility of, 370, 371, 372, 
 
 373- 
 
 Eucharist, the public act of com- 
 mitment, 371. 
 
 (Cf. also Agapae, Love-feast, 
 Communion Service, 
 Lord's Supper.) 
 
 " Eugenic Suggestion, A Practic- 
 able," 267. 
 
 "Evil," 142. 
 
 Evolution and heresy, 153. 
 
 Excommunicate, the, 407, 409. 
 
 Excommunication of heretics, 
 409. 
 
 Exorcism, the Anglican Church 
 and, 2. 
 
 Faith, statements of ethical, 189- 
 
 190. 
 
 False witness, 62 et seq. 
 Fellowship as a source of strength, 
 
 269. 
 
 Clough's hymn of, 340. 
 Filial reverence, 51. 
 Flood, the, 303-35- 
 Forgiveness of sins, 137-139, 
 
 173, 174, 228, 229. 
 Fornication, 398. 
 Frailty, confession of, 202. 
 Francis of Assisi, St, 167. 
 Free Trade, the Liberal party 
 
 and, 151. 
 Frere and Procter cited, 271. 
 
 General Confession, the, 227. 
 Germany, the Social-Democratic 
 
 party in, 357. 
 God, humanistic interpretation 
 
 of, 196. 
 immanence of, 94, 96, 100, 
 
 107, 1 08 et seq. 
 the ethical view of, 25 et 
 
 seq. 
 Godparents and their duties, 
 
 316-321. 
 
 Hanley Labour Church, the, and 
 the Lord's Prayer, 86. 
 
460 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Haupt, Professor, on the word 
 
 "JHVH," 246. 
 Health-history, records of, and 
 
 marriage, 403. 
 Heaven, 120 et seq. 
 
 Christian conception of, 124. 
 Hebrew Psalms, the, 243 et seq. 
 Henley, W. E., cited, 262. 
 Henry VIII. and ecclesiastical 
 
 law, 177. 
 
 Heresy and evolution, 153. 
 Bishop Colenso excommuni- 
 cated for, 410. 
 
 number of executions for, in 
 
 Queen Mary's reign, 178. 
 
 Heretics and the Athanasian 
 
 Creed, 150, 152, 158. 
 excommunication of, 409. 
 High Church (cf. Tractarian 
 
 Movement). 
 
 Higher Criticism of the Bible, 
 245, 250, 285, 287, 
 288. 
 Hippolytus, Murray's translation 
 
 of, 81-82. 
 History, dynamics of, 161-162. 
 
 English and Jewish, 282. 
 Holy Communion : introduction 
 
 of the ritual act, 350. 
 the long exhortation, 367. 
 transubstantiation, 346. 
 (Cf. Communion Service, 
 Eucharist, Lord's Supper, 
 Mass.) 
 Innocents' Day, the collect for, 
 
 231. 
 
 matrimony, meaning and im- 
 portance of the institution 
 of > 375- (Cf. Marriage 
 Service, Matrimony.) 
 Scripture, a universal, 289. 
 Honesty, intellectual, 63. 
 Hooker, Richard, cited, 268. 
 Hope and duty, confessions of, 
 
 1 8 1 et seq. 
 
 Human agency, God and, 87 et 
 seq. 
 
 Humanistic ethical religion, voca- 
 bulary of, 248. 
 idea of moral salvation, 89. 
 interpretation of moral experi- 
 ence, 92 et seq. 
 philosophy, 171. 
 view of spiritual needs, 99. 
 of the Creator, 96 et seq. 
 Huxley, Professor, 414. 
 " Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," 
 
 Shelley's, 216, 217, 258. 
 Hymnology, ethical, 265. 
 
 Clough's hymn of fellow-help, 
 
 340. 
 
 of the Old Testament, 251. 
 Mr Quin's hymn on death, 419. 
 
 Idol-worship, 35. 
 
 Images, 35. 
 
 the Roman Catholic use of, 36. 
 
 Immanence of God, the, 94, 96, 
 100, 107, 1 08 et seq. 
 
 Immersion, baptism by, 297, 299, 
 300. 
 
 Immorality, extra-conjugal, 56, 57. 
 
 Immortality of the soul, the doc- 
 trine of, 107, 121, 124, 
 147, 148, 218, 219, 220, 
 225, 229, 252, 417, 433- 
 
 434- 
 
 personal, 434. 
 Impurity, personal, 55. 
 Incarnation, the doctrine of the, 
 
 167, 172. 
 
 Incontinency and marriage, 398. 
 Infant baptism, 291 et seq., 305, 
 
 308. 
 
 and the Catechism, 330. 
 Infidelity, Professor Clifford on, 
 
 197. 
 Initiation ceremony, a suggested, 
 
 338 et seq. 
 into the Church-nation, 331, 
 
 33 2 - 
 Innocents' Day, collect for, and 
 
 its objectionableness, 231. 
 Insanity and suicides, 408. 
 
INDEX 
 
 461 
 
 Intellectual bravery, 63. 
 honesty, 63. 
 
 International Journal of Ethics, 
 the, 248. 
 
 Intoxication, 56. 
 
 Introductory sentences (cf. Open- 
 ing sentences). 
 
 Invocation of saints, the Anglican 
 Church and, 2. 
 
 " Israel," Zangwill's, 253, 259. 
 
 Jefferies, Richard, cited, 115. 
 " Jehovah," Zangwill's, 198. 
 Jehovah-worship, 20, 24 et seq. 
 Jesus, death of, 420. 
 Jewish Decalogue, the, 5 et seq. 
 weddings : exchange of rings, 
 
 39i- 
 
 Jews, the, and moral idealism, 76. 
 and parental function, 52. 
 and the 13 7th Psalm, 243, 
 
 244. 
 evolution of, 74, 135. 
 
 a period of spiritual advance, 
 
 ?5- 
 practice of baptism among, 
 
 305-. 
 
 unique vitality of, 31, 32. 
 JHVH, 245, 246, 441. 
 Judaism as a scheme of ethical 
 
 culture, 31, 32. 
 Judgment, doctrinal belief in, 
 
 230. 
 Jurisdiction of foreign bishops 
 
 invalid, 3. 
 
 Kant, Immanuel, 123, 133, 170, 
 
 171, 254. 
 Keble cited, 344. 
 Kempis, Thomas a, cited, 202. 
 
 Laissez-faire, the doctrine of, 
 
 277. 
 Latin tongue, the, and Roman 
 
 Catholics, 292. 
 Lazarus, the resurrection of, 436- 
 
 437- 
 
 Lectionary, the, 272 et seq. 
 literature and, 271^ seq. 
 suggested additions and emen- 
 dations, 272, 280 et seq., 
 289. 
 
 Liberal party and Free Trade, 151. 
 school, the, and the forward 
 
 movement, 282. 
 
 Lies considered in the light of 
 the ninth commandment, 
 62 et seq. 
 
 Life after death, 107, 121, 124, 
 147, 148, 218, 219, 220, 
 225, 229, 252, 417,433- 
 
 434- 
 
 Litany, the, 220 et seq. 
 responses, 220, 221. 
 suggested modifications, 221- 
 
 224. 
 Literature and the Lectionary, 
 
 271 et seq. 
 English, divine revelation in, 
 
 278-281. 
 Liturgy, revision of, suggestions 
 
 as to, 34, 37, 38, 41 et 
 
 passim. 
 
 Logic, laws of, 78. 
 Lord's Prayer, the, 70 et seq. 
 a prayer for devout people, 
 
 136. 
 a summary of the whole Gospel, 
 
 127. 
 
 analogy with the Ten Com- 
 mandments, 125 et seq. 
 and the Accession Service, 70. 
 and the Catechism, 328-329. 
 appears only in two of the 
 
 Gospels, 71. 
 authorship of, 71. 
 children and, 129 et seq. 
 compared with the Decalogue, 
 
 125. 
 contradictory settings of, 71 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 Cyprian and, 70. 
 discrepancies in the Gospels, 
 
 128. 
 
462 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lord's Prayer : frequency of reci- 
 tation, 70. 
 
 human agency and, 87-88. 
 
 inappropriate for penitents, 
 132. 
 
 Kant on, 133. 
 
 petitions are unconditional im- 
 peratives, 133. 
 
 Revised Version of, differences 
 from Authorised, 72. 
 
 suggested revision of, 72 et seq. 
 
 Tertullian and, 70. 
 
 the Decalogue of the New 
 Testament, 70. 
 
 the nation's prayer, 143. 
 
 the petitioners, 128 et seq. 
 
 the petitions of, 118 et seq. 
 
 the Power addressed, 79, 83 et 
 seq., 139. 
 
 the Revised Version rendering 
 of the last injunction, 142. 
 
 the "temptation" petition, 
 140-142. 
 
 the word " Father," 118 et seq. 
 
 unsuitable for children, 129. 
 Lord's Supper ranks in ethical 
 influence with the institu- 
 tion of the Jewish Sabbath, 
 371. (Cf. Eucharist, 
 Holy Communion, Mass, 
 Sacrament.) 
 Love, exordium on, 400-402. 
 
 James Russell Lowell's lines 
 on, 404-405. 
 
 Swinburne's poem on, 405. 
 Love-feast, the, 351, 362. (Cf. 
 
 Agapae, Eucharist.) 
 Lowell, James Russell, cited, 
 
 404-405. 
 Luke, St, Gospel of, and the 
 
 Lord's Prayer, 71. 
 Luther, Martin, 177-178. 
 
 on the eucharistic sacrifice, 
 347- 
 
 Magnificat, the, 272. 
 Mahomet cited, 211. 
 
 Man, divine nature of, Coleridge 
 
 on, 199. 
 
 innocency of, 393-394. 
 Mariolatry, 36. 
 Marriage : a quaint custom in 
 
 ancient Russia, 389. 
 a record of the health-history 
 of every man and woman 
 necessary, 403. 
 and incontinency, 398. 
 and the Lord's Prayer, 70. 
 banns of, 402, 403. 
 ceremony, the, 375 et seq. 
 suggested emendations of, 
 
 399 et seq. 
 the ceremony of the ring, 
 
 39- 
 
 civil, 380. 
 
 suggested homily to be used 
 at, 384-386. 
 
 deemed valid by the Catholic 
 Church without ecclesi- 
 astical rite until 1563, 
 
 .395- 
 
 fornication, 398. 
 fruitfulness of, 387. 
 incontinency, 398. 
 present-day, hostile to best 
 
 interests of national life, 
 
 39- 
 
 psychological aspect of, 396. 
 questions put to the man and 
 
 the woman, 388-389. 
 service, suggested revision of, 
 
 393 et seq. 
 the Episcopal Church of 
 
 America discards the 
 
 "warning," 397. 
 Shakespeare on, 400. 
 singular wedding custom in 
 
 Croatia, 389. 
 
 sociological aspect of, 396. 
 suggested formulary and 
 
 pledges, 391-393- 
 St Paul on, 381-383. 
 the early Christians were 
 
 married civilly, 395. 
 
INDEX 
 
 463 
 
 Marriage : the giving away of the 
 
 bride, 387-388. 
 the Jewish exchange of rings, 
 
 39i- 
 the pledges of bride and 
 
 bridegroom, 390. 
 the procreation of children, 
 
 397- 
 the sign or symbol of, 378 
 
 et seq. 
 
 vow of obedience, 389. 
 woman placed inferior to man 
 
 by the Church service, 
 
 3 8i. 
 
 (Cf. Matrimony.) 
 Martineau, Dr, cited, 198. 
 Mary, Queen, and punishment 
 
 for heresy, 178. 
 Mass, the, 347. 
 
 Matins and Evensong, 225 et seq. 
 suggested confessions, 182 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 Matrimony : age limit for, 388. 
 giving away of the bride, 387, 
 
 388. 
 the questions to the man and 
 
 the woman, 388. 
 the sign or symbol of, 378- 
 
 379- 
 (Cf. Marriage.) 
 
 Matthew, St, Gospel of, and the 
 Lord's Prayer, 71. 
 
 McDougall, Dr, cited, 267. 
 
 Meals in common, 351, 352, 
 356 et seq. 
 
 Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, 
 429. 
 
 Micah, the prophet, 12. 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, cited, 114, 
 141. 
 
 "Milton," Blake's, 262. 
 
 Milton's Areopagitica, 280. 
 sonnet on his blindness, 260. 
 
 Misrepresentations, 63 et seq. 
 
 Modernism, 156. 
 
 Monogamy (cf. Marriage, Matri- 
 mony). 
 
 Moral faith, 335. 
 
 goodness, 199, 200. 
 
 idealism and the Church, 126. 
 and the Jews, 76. 
 
 intuition, Emerson on, 200. 
 
 redemption, 100. 
 
 triumph of womanhood, 382. 
 Morality and democracy, 235. 
 
 and religion, distinction be- 
 tween, 49. 
 
 as a factor in religion, 4 et 
 
 seq. 
 Morning and Evening Prayer : 
 
 absolution, 228. 
 
 Apostles' Creed, 157, 170. 
 
 benediction, 204. 
 
 Chrysostom, prayer of St, 229. 
 
 collects, 229. 
 
 exhortation, the first, 225. 
 
 General Confession, 227. 
 
 lessons (cf. Lectionary). 
 
 Lord's Prayer, 70 et seq. 
 
 opening sentences, 194-195. 
 
 Prayer for Royal Family, 229. 
 
 Venite, the, 241. 
 Morris, William, cited, 124. 
 Murder and the sixth command- 
 ment, 54. 
 Music in the Ethical Church 
 
 (cf. Hymnology). 
 Mysticism, 172, 238. 
 
 Naden, Constance, cited, 197. 
 National Idealism and a State 
 
 Church^ 29, 247. 
 
 National idealism and the Ten 
 Commandments, 16 et 
 seq. 
 Natural law, 267. 
 
 selection, the law of, 237. 
 Nature, the laws of, 255. 
 Nature-hymns, 253 et seq. 
 lyrics, 256, 257, 258. 
 psalms, 249. 
 Neighbour-love, 20, 65. 
 New History of the Book of 
 Common Prayer, A, 271. 
 
464 
 
 INDEX 
 
 New Testament, higher criticism 
 of, 125 (cf. Higher Criti- 
 cism). 
 
 the, and the Lord's Prayer, 70, 
 142. 
 
 Newman, John Henry, 175, 176. 
 
 Nicene Creed, 157, 173. 
 
 Nonconformists, evolution of, 
 
 . J 53- . 
 
 their public act of commitment 
 in the sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper, 371. 
 Nunc Dimittis, the, 272. 
 
 "Ode to Duty," Wordsworth's, 
 
 215, 216. 
 "Ode to the West Wind," 
 
 Shelley's, 257. 
 Old Testament, Matthew Arnold's 
 
 ethical interpretation of, 
 
 246, 274, 277, 278. 
 the, and the Decalogue, i. 
 Omission, sins of, 91. 
 Opening sentences in Matins 
 
 and Evensong ethical in 
 
 character, 194. 
 Ownership, duties of, 60 et seq. 
 
 Parental function as held by the 
 
 Jews, 52. 
 
 Parents and children, 52, 53. 
 Paris cafes and social intercourse, 
 
 357- 
 
 Passover, festival of the, 351. 
 Paul, St, on the Eucharist, 354, 
 
 357- 
 rebuke to Corinthian Church, 
 
 362. 
 Penitence and the Lord's Prayer, 
 
 132. 
 
 PhcedO) Plato's, 449. 
 Plato, 170, 171, 449. 
 Polychrome Bible, the, 245, 
 
 246. 
 
 Portents and signs, 284. 
 Posterity-worship and the fifth 
 
 commandment, 53, 69. 
 
 Pragmatic philosophical school, 
 
 the, 171. 
 Prayer Book, the, i et seq. 
 
 Articles of Religion, 174 et seq. 
 Baptism, 291 et seq. 
 Benediction, the, 204. 
 Burial Service, 407 et seq. 
 Catechism, the, 322 et seq. 
 Collects, the, 229 et seq. 
 Commandments, the (cf. 
 
 Decalogue). 
 
 Confirmation, 306 et seq. 
 Creeds, the, 144 et seq. 
 Holy Communion, 345 et seq. 
 Holy Matrimony, 375 et seq. 
 Lectionary, the, 271 et seq. 
 Litany, the, ^20 et seq. 
 Lord's Prayer, the, 70 et seq. 
 Morning and Evening Prayer, 
 
 225 et seq. 
 
 opening sentences, 194 et seq. 
 Psalms, the, 240 et seq. 
 in its Literary and Liturgical 
 
 Aspects, Dowden's, 444. 
 revision of, 178, 308. 
 Prayers and Thanksgivings, 231 
 
 et seq. 
 
 for material help, 232. 
 for rain, 232, 233. 
 for the dead, 2. 
 for the King and Royal Family, 
 
 229. 
 Morning and Evening, 225 
 
 et seq. 
 Priesthood of the Roman Catholic 
 
 Church, 3. 
 Priests, the Ordering of, and the 
 
 Lord's Prayer, 70. 
 Procter and Frere cited, 271. 
 "Prometheus Unbound," Shel- 
 ley's, 139. 
 Property, ethical conception of, 
 
 65- 
 
 laws of, 60. 
 
 the State and, 61. 
 " Prospice," Browning's, 434. 
 Protection and Free Trade, 151. 
 
INDEX 
 
 465 
 
 Protestant Churches, democrati- 
 cally superior to the 
 Roman Catholic Church, 
 291. 
 
 reformers and the Holy Com- 
 munion, 347. 
 
 Psalm on the transitoriness of 
 life, a suggested, 442-443- 
 
 Psalms of the Burial Office, the, 
 
 439, 440, 441- 
 suggested alterations for various, 
 
 250. 
 the : the use of the word 
 
 "Lord," 245. (C/iHaupt, 
 
 Professor, and Wellhausen 
 
 on the use of JHVH.) 
 unfitness of, for the English 
 
 people, 240 et seq. 
 Psalter, the, 240. 
 
 formerly recited once a week, 
 
 240, 273. 
 in pre-Reformation times, 240, 
 
 273- 
 suggested additions to, 253 
 
 et seq. 
 Psychological aspects of marriage, 
 
 396. 
 Purity, the principle of, 57. 
 
 Quin, Mr Malcolm, cited, 419, 
 432. 
 
 Rain, the Church's prayer for, 
 
 232, 233- 
 Real presence, the belief in the, 
 
 346. 
 Red Sea, the passage through 
 
 the, 303-305. 
 Redemption, 324. 
 
 the theistic view of, 100. 
 Reformation, the, 177, 178, 347. 
 
 an ethical movement, i, 2. 
 Regeneration, 292. 
 Religion and morality, distinction 
 
 between, 49. 
 
 Articles of (cf. Articles of 
 Religion). 
 
 Religion, mystery in, 234 et seq. 
 Repentance, 182. 
 Responses, 1 3 et seq. 
 Restaurant life in Germany, 357. 
 Resurrection, the doctrine of the, 
 
 146, 147-149, 230, 319, 
 
 433-434, 437, 45 1> 452. 
 the, ethical view of, 148, 319. 
 Reunion, 175. 
 Revised Version of the New 
 
 Testament, the, 142. 
 Righteousness and prosperity, 
 
 233 et seq. 
 Ritual, need of, in the Ethical 
 
 Church, 310, 316, 320, 
 
 355, 35 6 - 
 
 purpose of, 291, 355. 
 Roman Catholic belief in the 
 
 Mass, 347. 
 conception of communion, 
 
 348. 
 
 Church : Burial Office, 2. 
 images, 36. 
 Missal and Breviary, the, i et 
 
 seq. 
 Rom an Catholics and Protestants, 
 
 cleavage between, 178. 
 and their continuance of the 
 
 Latin tongue, 292. 
 transubstantiation, 346. 
 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 408. 
 Rubrics : 
 
 concerning Baptism, 291. 
 Burial Service, 407. 
 the Lord's Prayer, 70. 
 the Ten Commandments, i. 
 the unbaptised, 408, 411. 
 (Cf. also Prayer Book.) 
 Russia, an ancient wedding 
 custom in, 389. 
 
 Sabatier, M., cited, 199. 
 Sabbath observance, 9 et seq. 
 Jewish reasons for, 10, 42. 
 the Lord's Prayer and, 125. 
 Sabbath, the Deuteronomic, 9, 
 43 et seq. 
 
 30 
 
4 66 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sabbath, the ethical, 42-43. 
 
 Sacrament of baptism, the, 291 
 
 et seq., 329. 
 of the Lord's Supper, 329, 345 
 
 et seq. 
 
 of the Lord's Supper, the most 
 perfect ethical rite in ex- 
 istence, 366, 373. 
 
 Sacraments, the, 329, 330. 
 
 Saints, communion of, ambiguity 
 of the phrase, 172. 
 
 Salvation, moral, humanistic 
 
 idea of, 89. 
 the doctrine of, 150 et seq., 193. 
 
 Schmidt, Professor Nathaniel, 
 
 138. 
 
 Science and the universe, 189- 
 
 190. 
 Scottish Episcopal Church and 
 
 the Burial Lesson, 444, 
 
 448. 
 
 Seeley, Sir John, 154, 208. 
 cited, 3 I2 -3i3, 335> 3 6 3-3^4- 
 on the Church, 373. 
 Self-destruction and the rubric of 
 
 the Burial Service, 407- 
 
 409. 
 
 Self-examination, 338, 367. 
 Sensual indulgence, excess of, 
 
 55, 57- 
 
 Sermon on the Mount and the 
 Lord's Prayer, 71-72, 128. 
 
 Sermons, 318. 
 
 Shakespeare on marriage, 400. 
 
 Shelley cited, 139, 216, 217, 257, 
 258, 423. 
 
 Signs and portents, 284. 
 
 Sin, the naturalistic signification 
 of the word, 301. 
 
 Sins of omission, 91. 
 
 remission of (cf. Absolution). 
 
 Social democracy, Anglicanism 
 and, 3 et seq. 
 
 Social- Democratic party in Ger- 
 many, successful organisa- 
 tion of, 357. 
 
 Social Democrats, German, 295. 
 
 Sociological aspects of marriage, 
 396. 
 
 Sociological Papers, the, Dr 
 McDougall's article in, 
 267. 
 
 Solitude, independence of, 197. 
 
 "Songs before Sunrise," Swin- 
 burne's, 214, 215. 
 
 Sophocles cited, 202. 
 
 " Spanish Gipsy," George Eliot's, 
 
 332. 
 Spencer, Herbert, and cremation, 
 
 414. 
 
 Spencerian agnosticism, 248. 
 State Church, reform of marriage 
 
 by, 378. 
 
 State-owned property, 61, 65. 
 Stephen, Sir Leslie, 414. 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, cited, 
 
 203. 
 
 Suicide and the sixth command- 
 ment, 54 
 Suicides, 407. 
 
 and insanity, the legal fiction 
 
 of, 408. 
 
 burial of, at cross-roads, 409. 
 Sun-worshippers, 81. 
 Supernaturalism, 346 et passim. 
 and third commandment, 39, 
 
 40. 
 Suppression of facts considered 
 
 in the light of the ninth 
 
 commandment, 63 et seq. 
 Swinburne, Algernon, cited, 210, 
 
 214, 215, 405, 428, 435, 
 
 43 6 - 
 
 Te Deum, the, 272. 
 
 "Temptation" a moral puzzle, 
 
 140. 
 Thomas a Kempis on, 202. 
 
 Tennyson's "Ancient Sage," 263, 
 
 264. 
 
 " Ode on the Death of Welling- 
 ton," 259, 260. 
 
 Tertullian on the Lord's Prayer, 
 70. 
 
INDEX 
 
 467 
 
 Tests, Ethical Church and, 
 
 335- 
 Theft, 59. 
 
 the social aspect of, 59-60. 
 Theism, transcendent, analysis 
 
 of, 84 et seq. 
 defects of, 97. 
 failure of, 99. 
 Thirty-nine Articles, the, 174 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 purpose of, 177. 
 
 Thoughts on the Present Discon- 
 tents , Burke's, 280. 
 "Tintern Abbey," Wordsworth's, 
 
 cited, 256. 
 
 Tractarian Movement, the, 175. 
 Transubstantiation an article of 
 
 faith in the Roman and 
 
 Greek Churches, 346. 
 Trent, Council of: the euchar- 
 
 istic declaration, 347. 
 Trinity, the, doctrine of, 156 et 
 
 seq. 
 the doctrine of, in the Litany, 
 
 220. 
 Tyrrell, Father, 154. 
 
 Unbaptised, the, 407, 412. 
 rubric concerning, 408, 411. 
 
 Unitarians, the, and the Lord's 
 Supper, 353. 
 
 Untruthfulness from the point of 
 view of the ninth com- 
 mandment, 62 et seq. 
 
 Venite, the, 241. 
 
 a nature-hymn, 241. 
 
 objections to, 241. 
 
 Wellhausen on, 241. 
 Virgin Birth, 172. 
 
 the doctrine of the, 146, 172. 
 
 Virgin Mary, cult of, 36. 
 Virtue and duty, social nature of, 
 
 200. 
 Visitation of the Sick, and the 
 
 Lord's Prayer, 70. 
 
 Water the arbitrary symbol of 
 
 baptism, 294. 
 Wealth, material, 65. 
 Wedding feast at Cana, the, 395, 
 
 396. 
 
 Weddings (cf. Marriage). 
 Wellhausen and the Jewish 
 
 Decalogue, 7 et seq. 
 cited, 241, 245. 
 on the 9oth Psalm, 441. 
 on the word " JHVH," 245. 
 on the 39th Psalm, 441. 
 West London Ethical Society, 
 
 265. 
 Whitman, Walt, cited, 333~334 
 
 432, 443, 444. 
 
 Woman, inferiority to man as- 
 sumed in the Marriage 
 Service, 381 et seq. 
 recognition of, and respect for 
 her moral personality, 
 281. 
 Womanhood, moral triumph of, 
 
 382. 
 
 Women's Property Act, 390. 
 Wordsworth cited, 198, 215, 216, 
 256, 261. 
 
 Yahwe, 245, 246, 247, 248, 
 
 249. 
 the God, 8, 34. 
 
 Zangwill, Israel, cited, 198, 217, 
 
 253 259- 
 Zwingli and the Eucharist, 353. 
 
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