It is an entirely good thing that there should be a minister of religion in London who attracts people of this order, particularly a minister whose moral notions are so eminently sane and so steadily uncompromising. London is stronger and less disreputable for Dr. Orchard's presence in its midst—no doubt a very vulgar, degrading, and trivial midst, but all the same a great congestion of little people, one where the solemn note of the old morality sounds all too seldom across the tinkle of bells in the caps of so many fools.
This moral influence, however, may appear questionable in the eyes of strong-minded and unsentimental people. Would he exercise such personal power, it may be asked, if he were not regarded as a "novelty," if the eccentricity of his position in the nonconformist world had not so skilfully advertised him to a light and foolish generation ever ready to run after what is new? Of an Anglican clergyman's popularity I have heard it said, "Who could not fill a church with the help of the band of the Grenadier Guards?"
I should not like to answer this question, and yet I do not like to pass it by. Antipathetic as I find myself to Dr. Orchard, it would not be just to imply that the power of his personal influence is not a great one, and one of an entirely wholesome nature. It seems to me, then, that the nature of that which attracts the unhappy to seek his counsel is of small moment in comparison with the extent and beneficence of his good counsel. The fact that he does help people, does save many people from very unhappy and dangerous situations, is a fact which gives him a title not only to our respect, but to our gratitude.
Perhaps it is his knowledge of all this petty misery and sordid unwholesomeness which makes him disposed at times, in spite of an almost rollicking temperament, to take dismal and despairing views of the religious future.
I have heard him say with some bitterness that people do not know what Christianity is, that it has been so misrepresented to them, and so mixed up with the quarrels of sectarianism, that the heart of it is really non-existent for the multitude. He speaks with impatience of the nonconformist churches and with contempt of the Anglican church. We are all wrong together. Organised religion, he feels, is hanging over the abyss of destruction, while the nation looks on with an indifference which should complete its self-contempt.
His quarrel, however, is not only with the churches, but with the nation as well. He regards the system under which we live as thoroughly unchristian. It is the system of mammon—a system of frank, brutal, and insolent materialism. Why do we put up with it?
His religious sense is so outraged by this system of economic individualism that he bursts out with irritable impatience against those who speak of infusing into it a more Christian spirit. For him the whole body of our industrialism is rotten with selfishness and covetousness, the high note of service entirely absent from it, the one energy which informs it the energy of aggressive self-seeking. Such a system cannot be patched. It is anti-Christian. It should be smashed.
He plunges into economics with a good deal of vigour, but I do not think he has thought out to its logical conclusion his thesis of guild socialism. Perhaps his tone is here more vehement than his knowledge of a notoriously difficult science altogether justifies.
He opposes himself to the evolutionary philosophy of the nineteenth century, and is ready to defend the idea of a Fall of Man. His contribution to theology is a quibble. The old dogmas are to stand: only the language is to be adjusted to the modern intelligence. You may picture him with drawn sword—a sword tempered in inquisitorial fires—standing guard over his quibble and ready to defend it with his spiritual life.
His opinions are apt to place him among minorities. He was against the War, and during that long-drawn agony attracted to himself the mild attention of the authorities. I believe he likened the great struggle to a battle between Sodom and Gomorrah. However, he was careful not to go so far as Mr. Bertrand Russell. As he himself says, "I don't mind dying for Jesus Christ, but not for making a silly ass of myself."