As he faces politics, so he faces religion.
He desires to rescue Christianity from all the sentimental vulgarities which have disfigured it in recent years—alike from the æsthetic extravagances of the ritualist and the organising fussiness of the evangelical; to rescue it from these obscuring unessentials, and to set it clearly before the eyes of mankind in the pure region of thought—a divine philosophy which teaches the only true science of life, a discipline which fits the Soul for its journey, "by an inner ascent," to the presence of God. Mysticism, he says, is the pursuit of ultimate, objective truth, or it is nothing.
Christianity demands the closest attention of the mind. It cannot be seen at a glance, understood in a moment, adopted by a gesture. It is a deep and profound philosophy of life. It proposes a transvaluation of values. It insists that the spiritual life is the only true life. It sets the invisible above the visible, and the eternal above the temporal. It tears up by the roots the lust of accumulation. It brings man face to face with a choice that is his destiny. He must think, he must decide. He cannot serve both God and Mammon. Either his life must be given for the imperishable values of spiritual existence or for the meats that perish and the flesh that will see corruption. Let a man choose. Christianity contradicts all his natural ideas; but let him think, let him listen to the voice of God, and let him decide as a rational being. Let him not presume to set up his trivial notions, or to think that he can silence Truth by bawling falsehood at the top of his voice. Let him be humble. Let him listen to the teacher. Let him give all his attention to this great matter, for it concerns his soul.
Here again is the aristocratic principle. The average man, until he has disciplined his reason to understand this great matter, must hold his peace; certainly he must not presume to lay down the law.
When we exclaim against this doctrine, and speak with enthusiasm of the virtues of the poor, Dr. Inge asks us to examine those virtues and to judge of their worth. Among the poor, he quotes, "generosity ranks far before justice, sympathy before truth, love before chastity, a pliant and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one. In brief, the less admixture of intellect required for the practice of any virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation."
But we are to love God with all our mind, as well as with all our heart.
Does he, then, shut out the humble and the poor from the Kingdom of God?
Not for a moment. "Ultimately, we are what we love and care for, and no limit has been set to what we may become without ceasing to be ourselves." The door of love stands open, and through that doorway the poor and the ignorant may pass to find the satisfaction of the saint. But they must be careful to love the right things—to love truth, goodness, and beauty. They must not be encouraged to sentimentalise; they must be bidden to decide. The poor can be debauched as easily as the rich. Many are called, but few chosen.
His main protest is against the rule of the ignorant, the democratic principle applied to the amor intellectualis Dei. Rich and poor, learned and ignorant, all must accept, with humility, the teaching of the Master. Plotinus, he points out, was the schoolmaster who brought Augustine to Christ. The greatest of us has to learn. He who would teach should be a learner all his life.
In everything he says and writes I find this desire to exalt Truth above the fervours of emotionalism and the dangerous drill of the formalist. Always he is calling upon men to drop their prejudices and catchwords, to forsake their conceits and sentiments, to face Truth with a quiet pulse and eyes clear of all passion. Christianity is a tremendous thing; let no man, believer or unbeliever, attempt to make light of it.